
Class ^EV^5_y 



GopightN»_l3A_^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



CACTUS AND PINE 



SONGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 



BY 



SHARLOT M. HALL 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH ^ COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, I9IO 
Sherman, French & Company 



C^C!.A:a78"«'iB 



\ 



To THE mother who bore my body; 
To the land that mothered my soul ; 
To the Ultimate Guide who led me 
Scarred through the battle, but whole ; 
Mother, and Land, atnd The Vision, 
Stern trails where my feet were set; 
Take these from the Price I owe ye — 
Whose life is less than the Debt. 



CONTENTS 



THE WEST 

THE SANTA FE TRAIL 

THE SONG OF THE COLORADO 

TWO BITS 

SPRING IN THE DESERT 

IN OLD TUCSON 

THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY 

THE SONG OF THE PINE 

SHEEP HERDING 

THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS 

THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER 

HIS PLACE 

THE TRAIL OF DEATH 

THE PINES OF THE MOGOLLONES 

THE IVORY CRUCIFIX 

A SONG FROM THE HILLS 

JUAN OF THE SLAG POTS 

OVER THE RANGE 

A SADDLE SONG 

AT MISSION PURISSIMA 

POPPIES OF WICKENBURG 

BOOT HILL .... 

THE DESERT QUEEN 

TO A HOME IN A CANON 

THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER 

THE MASS OF MANGAS 

THE WATER TANK AT DUSK 

DOLORES' OLLA 



PAGE 
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5 

9 
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26 
28 
31 
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35 
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43 
45 
47 
49 
51 
54 
55 
57 
58 
59 
61 
64 
67 



NIGHT IN THE PINES 

THE DESERT 

THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO 

CACTUS AND ROSE 

OUR LADY OF MIRAGE 

THE MAID OF TUCANO 

A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL 

THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS 

A FOREST LULLABY 

THE COLORADO RIVER 

THE END OF THE TRAIL 

THE RANGE RIDER 

THE YUCCA PALMS 

IN THE BRACKEN 

ARIZONA .... 



CAMP FIRE TALES 

THE HASH-WRASTLER 

WATCH 

MONTE BILL .... 



BEYOND THE DESERT 
THE GREATER FLAG 
THE HYMN OF THE MEN THAT FAIL 
THE LAST CAMP-FIRE 
THE GIVERS 
AGREED 

QUITS .... 
MEDUSA TO PERSEUS 
THE LONG QUEST 
A LITANY OF EVERY DAY 
WIND SONG 



PAGE 
69 

71 
72 
77 
79 
80 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
92 
93 
94 



101 
105 
109 



115 
119 
122 
124 
125 
126 
127 
130 
132 
134 



PAGE 

THE LOST THOUGHTS .... 136 

THE STRANGER 138 

DAY'S END 139 

THE FIRST FIRE ON THE HEARTH . 140 

A TRUCE WITH DEAD SOULS . . 142 

A FRIEND 143 

MAGDALEN 145 

THE EARTH MADONNA .... 146 

LOVE'S WISDOM ..... 147 

THE GIFTS 149 

LIFE IS A DAY 151 

THE COMPACT 153 

COMPANIONED 155 

ALONE . 157 

THE INHERITOR 158 

ON MY OWN PORTRAIT .... 161 

THE IMMORTAL 162 

THE BEDESMAN OF THE YEAR . . 165 

THE LONG MARCH 166 

THE RACE MOTHER 170 

ROAD'S END 172 

THE CHOOSING 173 

WINE OF DREAMS 175 

MY GARDEN 177 

SUMMER APPLES 178 

HER FINGER FATE 179 

DUMB IN JUNE 181 

MEMORIAM 182 

AS A LITTLE SHADOW ON THE GRASS 184 

DAWN 185 

A BALLAD OF CHARLIE'S MEN . . 186 











PAGE 


A LOST IDEAL 188 


THE LIFE-BOND 








189 


TO SONG 








190 


HER GIFT . . . 








191 


THE LIFE EXPRESS 








192 


FOR A BIRTHDAY 








193 


GODSPEED 








194 


A CHANT TO DEATH 








195 


THE FAR-CALLED 








197 


TIRED .... 








199 


WHEN SHE WENT ON 








200 


O GREAT CONSOLER 








201 


AND THIS IS LIFE 








203 


THE THINKER 








204 



CACTUS AND PINE 



THE WEST 

When the world of waters was parted by the 

stroke of a mighty rod, 
Her eyes were first of the lands of earth to look 

on the face of God; 
The white mists robed and throned her, and the 

sun in his orbit wide 
Bent down from his ultimate pathway and 

claimed her his chosen bride ; 
And he who had formed and dowered her with 

the dower of a royal queen, 
Decreed her the strength of mighty hills, the 

peace of the plains between ; 
The silence of utmost desert, and canons rifted 

and riven. 
And the music of wide-flung forests were strong 

winds shout to heaven. 

Then high and apart he set her and bade the 

gray seas guard. 
And the lean sands clutching her garments' 

hem keep stern and solemn ward. 
What dreams she knew as she waited! What 

strange keels touched her shore ! 
And feet went into the stillness and returned to 

the sea no more. 
They passed through her dream like shadows — 

till she woke one pregnant morn 
And watched Magellan's white-winged ships 

swing round the ice-bound Horn; 

[1] 



She thrilled to their masterful presage, those 

dauntless sails from afar. 
And laughed as she leaned to the ocean till her 

face shone out like a star. 

And men who toiled in the drudging hives of a 

world as flat as a floor 
Thrilled in their souls to her laughter and 

turned with face to the door; 
And creeds as hoary as Adam, and feuds as old 

as Cain, 
Fell deaf on the ear that harkened and caught 

that far refrain ; 
Into dungeons by light forgotten, and prisons 

of grim despair, 
Hope came with pale reflection of her star on 

the swooning air; 
And the old, hedged, human whirlpool, with its 

seething misery, 
Broke bound, as a pent-up river breaks through 

to the healing sea. 

Calling, calling, calling; resistless, imperative, 
strong ; 

Soldier and priest and dreamer — she drew them, 
a mighty throng; 

The unmapped seas took tribute of many a 
dauntless band. 

And many a brave hope measured but bleach- 
ing bones in the sand; 



[2] 



Yet for one that fell a hundred sprang out to 

fill his place; 
For death at her call was sweeter than life in a 

tamer race. 
Sinew and bone she drew them; steel-thewed — 

and the weaklings shrank; 
Grim-wrought of granite and iron were the men 
of her foremost rank. 

Stern as the land before them, and strong as 

the waters crossed ; 
Men who had looked on the face of defeat nor 

counted the battle lost ; 
Uncrowned rulers and statesmen, shaping their 

daily need 
To the law of brother with brother, till the 

world stood by to heed; 
The sills of a greater empire they hewed and 

hammered and turned. 
And the torch of a larger freedom from their 

blazing hilltops burned ; 
Till the old ideals that had led them grew dim 

as a childhood's dream. 
And Caste went down in the balance, and Man- 
hood stood supreme. 

The wanderers of earth turned to her, outcast 

of the older lands ; 
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and 

she reached them pitying hands ; 



[3] 



And she cried to the Old World cities that 
drowse by the Eastern main: 

"Send me your weary, house-worn broods, and 
I'll send you Men again ! 

Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my mar- 
shalled peaks of snow, 

Is room for a larger reaping than your o'er- 
tilled fields can grow ; 

Seed of the Man-Seed springing to stature and 
strength in my sun; 

Free, with a limitless freedom no battles of men 
have won." 

For men, like the grain of the cornfields, grow 

small in the huddled crowd; 
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul 

may speak aloud; 
For hills like stairways to heaven, shaming the 

level track ; 
And sick with the clang of pavements, and the 

marts of the trafficking pack; 
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of 

a breadth profound ; 
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed 

from the ground 
Was a human truth for the ages ; since the hour 

of the Eden-birth, 
That man among men was strongest who stood 

with his feet on the earth. 



[4] 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 

This way walked Fate; and as she went flung 

far the hne of destiny 
That bound an untracked continent to brother- 
hood from sea to sea ; 
That long gray trail of dream and hope, 

marked mile by mile with graves that keep 
On every barren hill and slope some stout heart 

lost in dreamless sleep. 
Patience and faith and fortitude were willed to 

it and justified; 
Stern, homely virtues, plain and rude; eternal 

as the sky, and wide. 
Nor ever sea king dared the sea in braver mood 

than those who went 
Strong-armed to wrest from Mystery their 

birth-right, half a continent. 

Gay, hawk-eyed, brown-faced voyageurs, tired 
of the river's muddy tide, 

Or drawn by whispered, golden lures, or beck- 
oned by the prairies wide ; 

These first, and lightly down the wind their 
songs float backward as they pass ; — 

So light they go they leave behind scarce one 
dim footprint on the grass. 

And after them, lean, rugged, grim, — one 
marked untrodden heights to scan; 

The gray peak looking down on him knew 
something kindred in the man: 

[5] 



Prophetic his keen eyes could trace in those 

lone wastes that seemed to wait, 
The larger promise of his race, the germ of 

many an unborn State. 

Then Fremont, leading Empire's way; beside 

him, silent, dim, unguessed. 
Unheralded to claim her own, the Soul of the 

Awakening West: 
Behind above the thundering flight of fear- 
swept bison vaguely beat 
A murmur dominant with might, the trample 

of a million feet. 
That long gray trail ! That path of fate ! For 

gain or loss, for life or death, 
Driven by greed or hope or hate, it drew them 

to the latest breath ; 
It broke them to its giant mold; it seared their 

weakness to the bone ; 
It stripped them stark to sun and cold and 

mocked at whimperer and drone. 

And they were Men that bore its mark; and 

they were Men its service made — 
Strong-souled to face the utter dark, and watch 

with Fear still unafraid; 
Stern school of heroes unconfessed; unweighed 

for meed of right or wrong; 
By glib late-comers dispossessed of honors that 

to them belong; 



[6] 



As in the fire-tried furnace hour strange, war- 
ring elements will fuse 

To purpose, unity, and power ; to truer strength 
and nobler use — 

Unconscious, save that here was life a man 
might live as manhood meant. 

They wrought a nation from their strife and 
shaped it with their discontent. 

No pulseless, still-born hope was theirs; each 
man a later Argonaut, 

Who from great dreams and ceaseless cares out- 
wove the golden fleece he sought; 

And single-handed out of need made potent op- 
portunity ; 

Nor shamed the hour with laggard deed; nor 
quailed at naked Destiny: 

They touched the Wilderness to flower; they 
gave the unvoiced solitude 

A tongue that spoke with master power the 
message of its iron mood: — 

But ah ! the coast ! The hands that bled ! The 
toll of heart-aches and of tears ! 

The stern, white faces of the dead that paved 
that highway through the years! 

The long grass hides the rutted trail where 

tracked those mighty caravans 
Whose far-lit camp fires low and pale, elude, 

howe'er the vision scans 



[7] 



That lost horizon, shrunk to fit the little roads 

that come and go, 
By easy ways of greatness quit, that any 

chance-drawn foot may know ; 
Light trails and traffic o'er the dust of them 

that were a braver breed; 
Forgotten in the careless lust for larger gain 

and lesser deed. — 
Mother of all the Roads that hold that power 

o'er men that makes or mars ! 
These lead to cities, lands, and gold — this led to 

the eternal stars ! 



[8] 



THE SONG OF THE COLORADO 

From the heart of the mighty mountains 

strong-souled for my fate I came, 
My far-drawn track to a nameless sea through 

a land without a name ; 
And the earth rose up to hold me, to bid me 

linger and stay ; 
And the brawn and bone of my mother's race 

were set to bar my way. 

Yet I stayed not, I could not linger; my soul 
was tense to the call 

The wet winds sing when the long waves leap 
and beat on the far sea wall. 

I stayed not, I could not linger; patient, re- 
sistless, alone, 

I hewed the trail of my destiny deep in the hin- 
dering stone. 

How narrow that first dim pathway — yet deep- 
ening hour by hour! 

Years, ages, eons, spent and forgot, while I 
gathered me might and power 

To answer the call that led me, to carve my road 
to the sea, 

Till my flood swept out with that greater tide 
as tireless and tameless and free. 

From the far, wild land that bore me, I drew 
my blood as wild — 

[9] 



I, bom of the glacier's glory, bom of the up- 
lands piled 

Like stairs to the door of heaven, that the 
Maker of All might go 

Down from His place with honor, to look on 
the world and know 

That the sun and the wind and the waters, and 

the white ice cold and still. 
Were moving aright in the plan He had made, 

shaping His wish and will. 
When the spirit of worship was on me, turning 

alone, apart, 
I stayed and carved me temples deep in the 

mountain's heart. 

Wide-domed and vast and silent, meet for the 

God I knew, 
With shrines that were shadowed and solemn 

and altars of richest hue; 
And out of my ceaseless striving I wrought a 

victor's hymn, 
Flung up to the stars in greeting from my far 

track deep and dim. 

For the earth was put behind me; I reckoned 

no more with them 
That come or go at her bidding, and cling to 

her garment's hem. 



[10] 



Apart in mj rock-hewn pathway, where the 

great cliffs shut me in, 
The storm-swept clouds were my brethren, and 

the stars were my kind and kin. 

Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went as one who 

goes 
On some high and strong adventure that only 

his own heart knows. 
Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went in my chosen 

road — 
I trafficked with no man's burden — I bent me to 

no man's load. 

On my tawny, sinuous shoulders no salt-gray 

ships swung in ; 
I washed no feet of cities, like a slave whipped 

out and in ; 
My will was the law of my moving in the land 

that my strife had made — 
As a man in the house he has builded, master 

and unafraid. 

O ye that would hedge and bind me — remember- 
ing whence I came ! 

I, that was, and was mighty, ere your race had 
breath or name ! 

Play with your dreams in the sunshine — delve 
and toil and plot — 

Yet I keep the way of my will to the sea, when 
ye and your race are not ! 

[11] 



TWO BITS 

Two Bits was an old race horse well known from 
Texas to Arizona. He belonged at the time of his 
death to Lieut. Charles Curtis (now Capt. Curtis, 
Military Instructor at the University of Wisconsin), 
who built the first stockade on the site of the present 
Fort Whipple, Arizona. The incident is true; wounded 
to his death, the old horse out-ran the Apaches and after 
his rider, who was severely wounded, fell off, Two Bits 
went on to Fort Wingate where the sight of his wounds 
and the bloody pouches told the story. The old horse 
headed the relief party and led them back to his fallen 
rider and then dropped dead. The troops, to all of 
whom the old race horse was a familiar comrade, buried 
him under a heap of lava bowlders beside the old Gov- 
ernment Trail a few miles west of Fort Wingate, New 
Mexico. 

Where the shimmering sands of the desert beat 

In waves to the foothills' rugged line, 
And cat-claw and cactus and brown mesquite 

Elbow the cedar and mountain pine; 
Under the dip of a wind-swept hill, 

Like a little gray hawk Fort Whipple clung; 
The fort was a pen of peeled pine logs 

And forty troopers the army strong. 

At the very gates when the darkness fell, 

Prowling Mohave and Yavapai 
Signalled with shrill coyote yell, 

Or mocked the night owl's piercing cry ; 
Till once when the guard turned shuddering 

For a trace in the east of the welcome dawn. 
Spent, wounded, a courier reeled to his feet: — 

"Apaches — rising — Wingate — ^watn !" 

[12] 



"And half the troop at the Date Creek Camp !" 

The Captain muttered ; "Those devils heard !" 
White-lipped he called for a volunteer 

To ride Two Bits and carry the word. 
"Alone; it's a game of hide and seek; 

One man may win where ten would fail." 
Himself the saddle and cinches set 

And headed Two Bits for the Verde Trail. 

Two Bits ! How his still eyes woke to the chase ! 

The bravest soul of them all was he ! 
Hero of many a hard-won race, 

With a hundred scars for his pedigree. 
Wary of ambush, and keen of trail, 

Old in wisdom of march and fray; 
And the grizzled veteran seemed to know 

The lives that hung on his hoofs that day. 

" A week. God speed you and make it less ! 

Ride by night from the river on." 
Caps were swung in a silent cheer, 

A quick salute, and the word was gone. 
Sunrise, threading the Point of Rocks ; 

Dusk, in the canons dark and grim. 
Where coiled like a rope flung down the cliffs. 

The trail crawls up to the frowning Rim. 

A pebble turned, a spark out-struck 

From steel-shod hoofs on the treacherous 
flint— 

[13] 



Ears strain, eyes wait, in the rocks above 
For the faintest whisper, the farthest glint ; 

But shod with silence and robed with night 
They pass untracked, and mile by mile 

The hills divide for the flying feet, 

And the stars lean low to guide the while. 

Never a plumed quail hid her nest 

With the stealthiest care that a mother may. 
As crouched at dawn in the chaparral 

These two, whom a heart-beat might betray. 
So, hiding and riding, night by night ; 

Four days, and the end of the journey near; 
The fort just hid in the distant hills — 

But hist! A whisper — a breath of fear! 

They wheel and turn — too late. Ping! Ping! 

From their very feet a fiery jet. 
A lurch, a plunge, and the brave old horse 

Leaped out with his broad breast torn and 
wet. 
Ping! Thud! On his neck the rider swayed; 

Ten thousand deaths if he reeled and fell! 
Behind, exultant, the painted horde 

Poured down like a skirmish line from Hell. 

Not yet ! Not yet ! Those ringing hoofs 

Have scarred their triumph on many a 
course ; 
And the desperate, blood-trailed chase swept on, 

[14] 



Apache sinews 'gainst wounded horse. 
Hour crowding hour till the yells died back, 

Till the pat of the moccasined feet was gone ; 
And dumb to heeding of foe or fear 

The rider dropped, — but the horse kept on. 

Stiff and stumbling and spent and sore. 

Plodding the long miles doggedly; 
Till the daybreak bugles of Wingate rang 

And a feint neigh answered the reveille. 
Wide swung the gates — a wounded horse — 

Red-dabbled pouches and riding gear; 
A shout, a hurry, a quick-flung word — 

And "Boots and Saddles" rang sharp and 
clear. 

Like a stern commander the old horse turned 

As the troop filed out, and straight to the 
head 
He guided them back on that weary trail 

Till he fell by his fallen rider — dead — 
But the man and the message saved. And he 

Whose brave heart carried the double load, 
With his last trust kept and his last race won. 

They buried him there on the Wingate road. 



[15] 



SPRING IN THE DESERT 

Silence, and the heat Hghts shimmer like a 

mist of sifted silver, 
Down across the wide, low washes where the 

strange sand rivers flow; 
Brown and sun-baked, quiet, waveless, trailed 

with bleaching, flood-swept bowlders; 
Rippled into mimic water where the restless 

whirlwinds go. 

On the banks the gray mesquite trees droop 

their slender, lace-leafed branches; 
Fill the lonely air with fragrance, as a beauty 

unconf essed ; 
Till the wild quail comes at sunset with her 

timorous, plumed covey. 
And the iris-throated pigeon coos above her 

hidden nest. 

Every shrub distills vague sweetness ; every 

poorest leaf has gathered 
Some rare breath to tell its gladness in a fitter 

way than speech ; 
Here the silken cactus blossoms flaunt their rose 

and gold and crimson, 
And the proud zahuaro lifts its pearl-carved 

crown from careless reach. 

Like to Lillith's hair down-streaming, soft and 
shining, glorious, golden, 

[16] 



Sways the queenly palo verde robed and 
wreathed in golden flowers ; 

And the spirits of dead lovers might have joy 
again together 

Where the honey-sweet acacia weaves its shadow- 
fretted bowers. 

Velvet-soft and glad and tender goes the night 

wind down the canons, 
Touching lightly every petal, rocking leaf and 

bud and nest ; 
Whispering secrets to the black bees dozing in 

the tall wild lilies, 
Till it hails the sudden sunrise trailing down 

the mountain's crest. 

Silence, sunshine, heat lights painting opal- 
tinted dream and vision 

Down across the wide, low washes where the 
whirlwinds wheel and swing; — 

What of dead hands, sun-dried, bleaching.'' 
What of heat and thirst and madness.'* 

Death and life are lost, forgotten, in the won- 
der of the spring. 



[17] 



IN OLD TUCSON 

In old Tucson, in old Tucson, 

How swift the happy days ran on ! 

How warm the yellow sunshine beat 

Along the white caliche street! 

The flat roofs caught a brighter sheen 

From fringing house leeks thick and green, 

And chiles drying in the sun; 

Splashes of crimson 'gainst the dun 

Of clay-spread roof and earthen floor; 

The squash vine climbing past the door 

Held in its yellow blossoms deep 

The drowsy desert bees asleep. 

By one low wall, at one shut gate. 
The dusty roadway turned to wait; 
The pack mules loitered, passing where 
The muleteers had sudded care 
Of cinche and pack and harness bell. 
The oleander blossoms fell. 
Wind-drifted flecks of flame and snow ; 
The fruited pomegranate swung low ; 
And in the patio dim and cool 
The gray doves flitted round the pool 
That caught her image lightly as 
The face that fades across a glass. 

In old Tucson, in old Tucson, 

The pool is dry, the face is gone. 

No dark eyes through the lattice shine, 

[18] 



No slim brown hand steals through to mine ; 
There where her oleander stood 
The twilight shadows bend and brood, 
And through the glossed pomegranate leaves 
The wind remembering waits and grieves; 
Waits with me, knowing as I know, 
She may not choose to come and go — 
She who with life no more has part 
Save in the dim pool of my heart. 

And yet I wait, and yet I see 

The dream that was come back to me ; 

The green leek springs above the roof. 

The dove that mourned alone, aloof. 

Flutes softly to her mate among 

The fig leaves where the fruit has hung 

Slow-purpling through the sunny days; 

And down the golden desert haze 

The mule bells tinkle faint and far ; — 

But where her candle shone, a star ; 

And where I watched her shadow fall, — ■ 

The gray street and a crumbling wall. 



[19] 



THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY 

Throughout the desert region of the Southwest are 
abandoned mining camps; shafts caved, machinery si- 
lent and rusting away, sand drifted in the long-empty 
cabins. In one such deserted camp a child's play-house 
was found beside a great bowlder, the little toys and 
treasures undisturbed through all the years. 

The hoof -worn pack trails still wind down past 

barren cliff and ledge, 
And fail and fade like water spilled at the sage 

gray desert's edge ; 
Lost in the shifting sand banks, clear where the 

long dykes lift 
Their rough, brown, sun-burned shoulders out 

of the wind-blown drift. 



Like scars long-healed the weed-grown dumps 

where the miners plied their craft, 
And the tuna drops its crimson fruit down the 

mouth of the caving shaft. 
A broken shovel, a worn-out pick — and down in 

the gulch below 
A lean coyote home? her whelps where the stamps 

beat blow on blow. 

Where the tent camp took its careless way to 

the rocky canon's brink. 
The plumed quail leads her covey, and the wild 

deer come to drink ; 



[20] 



But then the mule bells tinkled, and, proud of 

her rank and place, 
The old white bell mare took the lead, setting 

the train its pace. 

And close by a gray-ribbed bowlder, shading 
her eyes with her hands. 

Watching the ore trains passing out to the un- 
known lands, 

A little, wistful figure with dreaming, gentle 
face. 

Like a flower from some old-time garden abloom 
in that rugged place. 

Child of the sun-white desert ; no other land she 

knew; 
Its cactus and sage were her greenest green ; its 

skies were her deepest blue; 
The shy, wild things were her playmates, and 

under the old cleft stone 
She builded a little kingdom for her and them 

alone. 

And here are her guarded treasures, quaint 

little shapes of clay. 
Fashioned by small brown fingers as she sang at 

her lonely play ; — 
But the dust lies thick upon them, and sand 

drifts bar the door. 
And only a swift green lizard shimmers across 

the floor. 

[21] 



Like memories worn too deep to lose the pack 

trail still winds down, 
Out past the old gray bowlder and the ledges 

seamed and brown; 
Till here it swerves a hand-width back, where 

once the rough cross stood. 
With a child's brief name and a child's scant 

years carved in the sun-bleached wood. 

The cross is fallen and crumbling, but still the 

wild quails call 
As if they missed a comrade through the sage 

brush thick and tall; 
And where the love vine tangles and the wind 

croons low at even, 
The little playhouse waits for her, for " Mary, 

aged seven." 



[22] 



THE SONG OF THE PINE 

Hear now the song of the pine 

That is sung when strong winds sweep 
Hot -flung from the mighty South, 

Or the North Wind bellows deep: 
Hear thou the song of the pine 

When the sea-wet West beats in, 
Or the East from his tether breaks 

With clamorous, human din. 
The long boughs quiver and shake, 

Uproused from their primal ease, 
And bend as an organ reed 

When a strong hand strikes the keys ; 
And a mighty hymn rolls forth 

To the far hills farthest line. 
Earth's challenge and trumpet call — 

Hear now the song of the pine. 

The strong gray hills are my throne, the rock- 
ribbed thews of the earth; 
There have I marshalled my brethren, and 
laughed at wind and sun; 
I tent with the crag and the eagle; the Cloud 
Gods saw my birth; 
I have drunk the strength of ages — a thou- 
sand years as one. 

I have warred with rift and crevice, with ava- 
lanche and shale. 
Grappling my barren ridge with the grip of 
a mail-clad fist; 

[23] 



Storms roll their anger around me, torn through 
with lightnings pale, 
Or robe me in lonely ermine, or garb me with 
sodden mist. 

The stars are my near companions ; ever to them 
I lift, 
And grow to their nightly splendor with soul 
as far and free; 
Counting the swinging seasons by the planet's 
veer and drift. 
Till again the wild Spring-Joy wells up from 
the earth to me: — 

The old, fierce joy of living, all primitive, un- 
denied ; 
As breathed from the Maker's lips on clay 
still warm with its touch ; 
When no soul skulked or whimpered, or in im- 
potent weakness cried. 
And life was a strong man's gift to be held 
in an iron clutch. 

Held — or flung down as the pine-top shakes 
down a ripened cone ; 
Then stretches green fingers skyward with 
larger faith and hope; 
Glad without thought or question, undoubtful 
of earth or sun. 
From the bent blue overhead to the mold 
where the dark roots grope. 

[24] 



But level sinketh to level as height calls up to 
height ; 
Courage is born of danger; the deed of the 
naked need; 
Came Ease to sit on the hearth, dear-bought 
with the ancient might, 
And drunk with her smile men slept and 
lapsed to a weaker breed, 

O men that dream in the lowland, men that 
drowse in the plain. 
Wake ye, and turn to the forest, turn to the 
far, high hills ; 
Ye shall win from their unspent greatness the 
olden strength again; 
Ye shall hear in that lofty silence the battle 
shout that thrills. 

Ye shall find in those utmost reaches power un- 
defiled ; 
Wisdom untaught of sages, and patience and 
truth divine; 
Life tameless still; untainted; primal and po- 
tent and wild — 
Rouse ye, nor linger belittled, — shamed by 
the wind-swung pine. 



[25] 



SHEEP HERDING 

A GRAY, slow-moving, dust-bepowdered wave, 

That on the edges breaks to scattering spray, 
Round which the faithful collies wheel and bark 

To scurry in the laggard feet that stray: 
A babel of complaining tongues that make 

The dull air weary with their ceaseless fret; 
Brown hills akin to those of Gallilee 

On which the shepherds tend their charges yet. 

The long, hot days ; the stark, wind-beaten 
nights ; 
No human presence, human sight or sound; 
Grim, silent land of wasted hopes, where they 
Who came for gold oft times have madness 
found ; 
A bleating horror that fore-gathers speech; 
Freezing the word that from the lip would 
pass; 
And sends the herdsman grovelling with his 
sheep. 
Face down and beast-like on the trampled 
grass. 



The collies halt ; the slow herd sways and reels. 
Huddled in fright above a low ravine, 

Where wild with thirst a herd unshepherded 
Beats up and down — with something dark 
between ; 

[26] 



A narrow circle that they will not cross; 

A thing to stop the maddest in their run — 
A guarding dog too weak to lift his head, 

Who licks a still hand shriveled in the sun. 



[27] 



THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS 

Felix Knox was killed by a band of renegade Apaches 
under Na-chis, son of the famous chief Ca-chis, near 
York's Ranch in south-eastern Arizona. Knox made a 
brave fight and when found his body was not muti- 
lated, and the face had been covered to keep away the 
coyotes and vultures. 

Knox the gambler — Felix Knox ; 

Trickster, short-card man, if you will; 
Rustler, brand-wrangler — all of that — 

But Knox the man and the hero still! 
For life at best is a hard-set game ; 

The cards come stacked from the Dealer's 
hand; 
And a man plays king of his luck just once — 

When he faces death in the last grim stand. 

Knox had been drummer in Crook's command; 

A devil of daring lived in his drum; 
With his heart in the call and his hand on the 
sticks 
The dead from their sand-filled graves might 
come: 
Crippled for life he drummed his last; 

Shot through the knee in the Delshay fight — 
But he crawled to a rock and drummed "Ad- 
vance" 
Till the Tonto renegades broke in flight. 

That was the man who shamed Na-chis ! 
Two miles out on the Clifton Road 

[28] 



Beyond York's Ranch the ambush lay, — • 
Till a near, swift-moving dust-whirl showed 

Where the buckboard came. Na-chis crouched 
low 
And gripped his rifle and grimly smiled 

As he counted his prey with hawk-like eyes — 
The men, the woman, the little child. 

They halted — full in the teeth of the trap. 
Knox saw — too late. He weighed the 
chance 
And thrust the whip in the driver's hand 

And wheeled the mules: "Back! Back to 
the ranch!" 
He cried as he jumped; "I'll hold them off. 
Whip for your life!" The bullets sung 
Like swarming bees through the narrow pass. 
And whirred and hummed and struck and 
stung. 

But he turned just once — to wave his hand 

To wife and child; then straight ahead, 
With yell for yell and shot for shot. 

Till the rocks of the pass were spattered red ; 
And seven bodies bepainted and grim 

Sprawled in the cactus and sand below; 
And seven souls of the Devil's kin 

Went with him the road that dead men know. 



[29] 



Ay! That was Knox! When the cowboys 
came « 

On the day-old trail of the renegade, 
Na-chis the butcher, the merciless, 

This was the tribute the chief had paid 
To the fearless dead. No scarring fire ; 

No mangling knife ; but across the face 
His own rich blanket drawn smooth and straight, 

Stoned and weighted to keep its place. 



[30] 



THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER 

Lo HERE is the sea, the sea! 

And long waves leaped to my feet; 

Foam-white the breakers beat, 

Or crept to the hedging rocks 

As a whipped cur creeps to the kne^— 

Look, here is the sea, the sea ! 

Was it regal, as I had dreamed. 
With its far-drawn dole of ships? 
Or sad with the breath of lips 
That greet their beloved no more? 
Wetly the white sands gleamed ; 
Like those other sands they seemed. 

I have stood as the sun went down, 
At dusk on the desert's edge. 
In the grip of a sheltering ledge. 
And watched the wide plain bum 
To silver from red and brown; 
Gem-set like a royal crown. 

These waves that ripple and roll 
Have rippled in waves of light 
Long since to my childish sight; 
And the pale heat vapors that glide 
Were sea sprites taking toll 
For a chartless voyager's soul. 



[31] 



Low lights ashine on the lee, 
Where the orient steamers come ; 
E'en so the stars at home 
Hang low in the purple sky ; — 
'Twas the face of a friend to me, 
But they cry "The sea ! The sea !" 



[32] 



HIS PLACE 

To the enduring memory of Clarence H. Shaw, 
who knew the desert as few men know it, and who 
Hes at rest in one of its most beautiful corners. 

This is his place — here where the mountains 

run, 
Naked and scarred and seamed up to the face 

of the sun; 
His place — reaches of wind-blown sand, brown 

and barren and old; 
Where the creosote, scorched and glazed, clings 

with a stubborn hold; 
And tall and solemn and strange the fluted cac- 
tus lifts 
Its arms like a cross that pleads from the lonely, 

rock-hedged rifts ; 
His place — where the great, near stars lean low 

and burn and shine 
Still and steady and clear, like lamps at the 

door of a shrine. 

This is his land, his land — where the great skies 

bend 
Over the wide, clean sweep of a world without 

measure or end: 
His land — where across and between the pale, 

swift whirlwinds go 
Like souls that may not rest, by their quest sent 

to and fro: 
And down the washes of sand the vague mirages 

lay 

[33] 



Their spell of enchanted light, moving in ripple 

and spray 
Of waters that gleam and glisten, with joy and 

color rife — 
Streams where no mouth may drink, but fair as 

the River of Life. 

This is his place — the mesquite, like a thin 

green mist of tears, 
Knows the way of his wish, keeps the hope of 

his years ; 
Till, one appointed day, comes the with-holden 

spring ; 
Then, miracle wrought in gold, that swift, rare 

blossoming ! 
This is his place — where silence eternal fills 
The still, white, sun-drowsed plain, and the 

slumbering, iron-rimmed hills; 
Where To-day and Forever mingle, and 

Changeless and Change are one — 
Here in his own land he waits till To-day and 

Forever are done. 



[34] 



THE TRAIL OF DEATH 

The Jornado del Muerto^ the desert trail across 
southern New Mexico and Arizona. 

We rode from daybreak; white and hot 

The sun beat like a hammer-stroke 
On molten iron ; the blistered dust 

Rose up in clouds to sere and choke ; 
But on we rode, gray-white as ghosts, 

Bepowdered with that bitter snow. 
The stinging breath of alkali 

From the grim, crusted earth below. 

Silent, our footsteps scarcely wrung 

An echo from the sullen trail; 
Silent, parched lip and stiffening tongue. 

We watched the horses fall and fail: 
Jack's first; he caught my stirrup strap; — 

God help me! but I shook him off; 
Death had not diced for two that day 

To meet him in that Devil's trough. 

I flung him back my dry canteen. 

An ounce at most, weighed drop by drop 
With life; he clutched it, drank, and laughed; 

Hard, hideous — a peal to stop 
The strongest heart; then turned and ran 

With arms outflung and mad eyes set, 
Straight on where 'gainst the dun sky's rim 

Green trees stood up, and cool and wet 

[35] 



Long silver waves broke on the sand. 

The cursed mirage! that lures and taunts 
The thirst-scourged lip and tortured sight 

Like some lost hope that mocking haunts 
A dying soul. I tried to call, — 

The dry words rattled in my throat; 
And sun and sand and crouching sky — 

God ! How they seemed to glare and gloat ! 

Reeling I caught the saddle-horn; 

On, on; but now it seemed to be 
The spring-house path, and at the well 

My mother stood and beckoned me: 
The bucket glistened; drip, drip, drip, 

I heard the water fall and plash ; 
Then keen as Hell the burning wind 

Awoke me with its fiery lash. 

On, on; what was that bleaching thing 

Across the trail .^^ I dared not look; 
But on — blind, aimless, till the sun 

Crept grudging past the hills and took 
His curse from off the gasping land. 

The blessed dusk! my gaunt horse raised 
His head and neighed, and staggered on; 

And I, with bleeding lips, half -crazed, 

Laughed out; for just above us there, 
Rock-caught against a blackened ledge 

A little pool ; one last hard climb ; 
Full spent we fell upon its hedge — 

[36] 



One still forever. Weak I lay 

And drank; hot hands and temples laved 
Jack gone, alas ! the horses dead ; 

But night and water — I was saved ! 



[37] 



THE PINES OF THE MOGOLLONES 

In the forests on the mountains sing the pines 

a wondrous measure, 
As the wind, the master-player, sways their 

branches to and fro: 
Varied music, full of power, full of passion, 

joy, and sorrow; 
Wild and loud with pain and heart-break, then 

with love and gladness low. 

And that music holds the story of the world 
since its first waking; 

Holds the secret of all living and the life that 
yet will be; 

All the lore the wind has gathered as he roamed 
the wide earth over. 

From the silent, sun-white desert to the rest- 
less, moaning sea. 

In that singing whisper softly voices of the 

long lost peoples ; 
Hymns that rose o'er crumbled altars, prayers 

for the forgotten dead; 
Mothers' sighs and children's laughter mingle 

with the soldiers' war cry, 
Clash of arms and blare of trumpets, and the 

conquering army's tread. 

And above this earth-born music rings a higher 
tone incessant, 

[38] 



Calling: "Upward! Upward! Upward! Rise and 

follow where I go; 
Leave the camp-fire, leave the quarry, seek the 

joy that comes of seeking. 
While the strong peaks keep their places and 

the snow-sweet waters flow." 

And the wind, the master-player, blends these 

varied tones together 
Till they rise, a glorious paean, from the forests 

wide and free — 
Rise and echo on forever ; full of courage, hope, 

and daring; 
Wild with all the pain of living, glad with all 

life's harmony. 



[39] 



THE IVORY CRUCIFIX 

In crossing southern Arizona many years ago the late 
Captain W. O. O'Neill, "Buckey" O'Neill, as he was 
then called, saw something protruding from a mound of 
sand at the foot of a giant cactus. Turning aside to in- 
vestigate he found the sun-dried bodies of a man and 
woman, the withered, skeleton hand of the woman still 
holding an ivory crucifix. 

Captain O'Neill buried the bodies and brought away 
the crucifix. Some time later he learned that it had be- 
longed to the young wife of a Mexican cattle rancher. 
She had loved one of her husband's vaqueros and they 
had gone away together. The husband and his men fol- 
lowed till turned back by the sand storm which had 
swallowed up the fugitives. It seemed that the woman, 
too weak to unclasp the crucifix from her neck, had 
stretched the slender rosary to its full length in her 
effort to lay the crucifix on her lover's lips as he 
breathed his last. 

"Ride, Juan, he follows, follows fast ! " 

Nay, darling, down the wind 
You do but hear the trampling herds 

That flee our path behind: 
Look forward where the sunrise plays 

Across the mountain's rim; 
There shall you measure fairer days 

With me, and far from him. 

"Oh! Juan, the desert lies between, 

A waste of fear and dread; 
Smitten with bitter winds that shake 

The white bones of the dead: 
It lies between, as in our hearts 

Our sinful loving lies ; 
Think you that earth will grant us peace 

An angry heaven denies .f^" 

[40] 



"Haste ! Haste ! I hear the click of steel, 

The ring of muffled spur, 
And fearful shapes loom grim against 

The far mirage's blur ; 
Up-swimming on its trembling light 

Huge, shadowy giants ride. 
Like blood-avengers through the haze — 

He, with his men beside!" 

Red swung the sun, a sullen disk 

Across the copper sky, 
And whirling sand-wreaths pale as ghosts 

Beat upward spitefully; 
Beat up and broke, and whirled anew. 

And called their nameless kin 
To race with them the race of death 

No soul of man may win. 

Forgot and far the fear behind; 

Before the God of Wrath 
Out-stretched his hand upon the storm 

And barred their guilty path: 
"A cross !" How grim and gray and gaunt 

The tall zahauro loomed. 
As if in solemn vigil o'er 

Some martyr-saint entombed. 

"Pray! Pray!" she whispered as they fell; 

"The pitying saints may hear. 
Jesus ! One mercy in the name 

[41] 



Of her that is most dear! 
Oh ! Mary ! Mother ! if jour grace 

Be given to such as we, 
I pray you of your tenderness, 

Spare him and punish me!" 

"The crucifix my mother gave!" 

With dying breath she strove 
To lay the carven, ivory Christ 

Upon the lips beloved. 
"Mine be the penance, gracious Lord!" 

The dark wall closed apace, 
As if earth strove to hide from Heaven 

The anguished, pleading face. 

Still, still, along the drifted sand ; 

How still the starlight crept ! 
How still his vigil sad and lone 

The gaunt zahuaro kept! 
There, where in wavering shadows that 

Like life's threads intermix. 
Her dead hand still to his dead lips 

Pressed close the crucifix. 



[42] 



A SONG FROM THE HILLS 

Oh, the black bear on the mountain! 

Oh, the trout in stream and fountain ! 

Oh, the bloodhound's bay that echoes loud and 

clear ! 
Oh, the buck, his proud head shaking, 
From the leafy covert breaking. 
As he scents the air that tells of danger near! 

Oh, the sunlight softly streaming. 
On the polished rifle gleaming 
As we follow on the trail with stealthy tread! 
Oh, the camp-fire dimly glowing, 
Dusky, flickering shadows throwing 
O'er the piney boughs that form the hunter's 
bed! 

Oh, the woodland life enchanting. 

Memory's farthest chamber haunting 

With the mountain air and odor of the pine! 

Though a palace door stood waiting, 

I would pass its golden grating 

With a smile and never wish its splendors mine. 

For the forests with their shadows, 

Hidden springs and sunny meadows. 

And the mountains in their glory are my own: 

In the breeze the fir trees whisper 

Music like a solemn vesper. 

And the pines take up the song in fuller tone. 

[43] 



Life is freer here and fuller; 

All beside of earth grows duller; 

And the one whose soul this strong enchantment 

fills 
Leaves all other things when dying, 
And like a homing pigeon flying 
Turns him back to lie and rest among the hills. 



[44] 



JUAN OF THE SLAG POTS 



<e 



A Run-away" in the smelter, at Jerome, 
Arizona. 

Juan of the slag pots, sullen and grim, 

Scarred of jaw and crooked of limb; 

May the Mother of Christ have thought of him ! 

Ay ! Juan, lame Juan ; no saint indeed. 

But a better thing — a man, at need. 

Night long where the reek of the sulphur smoke 

Rolls up till the heart is like to choke ; 

Till the ears are sick with the clang and whirr, 

And the eyeballs ache with the fiery blur, 

Juan rolled the slag pots, huge and black. 

And poured them out in a burning track 

Down the slippery dump like a lava flow, 

To cool in the canon depths below. 

Behind in the smelter vast and dim 

The beat of the great blasts called to him. 

And deep in the throat of the furnace glowed 

The molten ore on its fiery road; 

Soon to flow in a golden stream. 

With rainbow shimmer and jeweled gleam 

Into the pots like some strange wine. 

" Tap ! " the foreman gave the sign. 

Juan poised the bar on his arm at rest 

And swung it straight for the clay-cloaked 

" breast " ; 
A touch; a fury of blinding light; 
A sweep of the swirling mass flame-white; 

[46] 



Hot drops flung like scorching hail 
As the swift flood leaped from its narrow trail 
Like a hungry hound on a blood-stained track, 
" Back ! " the frightened men surged back ; 
Reeled and ran — but the hindmost fell 
Straight in the path of that molten hell. 
Cheeks that were black with the stinging smoke 
Went white beneath, and a hoarse shout broke 
From the swaying crowd — but no man moved ; 
And the hot flood crept and crawled and shoved 
Its flame-tongues out. Then straight and swift 
Juan leaped, and they saw him stoop and lift 
A fear-dazed burden, and turn and call 
On the saints for mercy. Ay ! that's all. 
Where the great blasts beat and the smoke drifts 

low, 
Like ragged veils swung to and fro. 
Shifting, shimmering, dun and gray, 
Juan sits in the sunshine day by daj^; 
Juan of the slag pots, sullen and grim, 
Scarred of jaw and crooked of limb — 
May the Mother of Christ have thought of 

him! 



[46] 



OVER THE RANGE 

«L died at Chilikoot Pass: 'Good-bye boys,' he 

said; 'I'm going over the range too— but I've got to 

blaze my own trail.' " 

Letter from the Klondyke. 

Open the door of the tent, boys, 

And turn my face to the snow; 
Let me look once more on the grand old peaks 

Ere my summons comes to go ; 
For I start tonight on a stranger trail 

Than any our feet have trod — 
With never a blaze to mark the way, 

Nor a footstep pressed on the sod. 

'Tis an old, old road, but who passes there 

Goes out in the dark alone ; 
With no hail from the comrades gone before, 

And the camping-grounds unknown; 
There's never a guide for love or gold 

Would lead you along that track. 
And you needn't tighten your cartridge belt. 

Nor diamond hitch the pack. 

What foes may lurk in the shadows dark 

No mortal hand can stay; 
And the wealth you have heaped with a life- 
time's toil 

Is as dust beside the way ; 
For empty-handed we strike Life's trail 

When the dawn wind sings of hope, — 

[47] 



And empty-handed we turn at last 
On the brink of its utmost slope. 

I set my face to the stars tonight, 

My heart to the Silent Call ; 
And fearlessly follow the unknown path 

That leads to the fate of all. — 
Be it rest or work or peace or strife — 

Be rust or growth the change — 
Here's one who goes with a joyous soul, 

Nor shrinks to cross the range. 



[48] 



A SADDLE SONG 

The jingle of spur and rattle of rein > the musi- 
cal squeak of good saddle leather." 

To HORSE ! as rode the knights of old for tour- 
ney and affray ; 

To horse ! the world is wide, and ours, free 
heart and summer day: 

Oh! Laughter now shall be our god and every 
care take wings, 

And we'll take our marching orders from the 
song the saddle sings. 

The gipsey blood is coursing red along each 
leaping vein ; 

We are brothers to the bursting flower and kin- 
dred with the rain: 

How the voice of nature calls us ! How it beck- 
ons ! How it rings, 

In the echoes of the marching song the old 
saddle sings ! 

The fir trees standing sentinel upon the moun- 
tain's crest 

Have sent their message on the wind to fill us 
with unrest ; 

To mingle with our dreams the scent the healing 
balsam flings, 

And blend the forest whispers with the song 
the saddle sings. 

[49] 



O jingling spur and rattling rein, brown earth 
and bending sky, 

We turn to you to brim again the cup of life 
run dry; 

Take toll of all the fancied gain that hard- 
spent striving brings, 

But set our days in measure with the song the 
saddle sings. 



[50] 



AT MISSION PURISSIMA 

The hands are dust that piled these rough 

brown walls, 
Yet still the sunshine falls 
Like a touch warm with love upon the gilded 

cross, 
Whose yearly loss 

By wind and rain has worn its gilt away. 
As youth, which cannot stay 
When life frets hard upon its shining stuff: 
Yet 'tis enough 
That once the cross was gold, the heart alive to 

joy. 

The dark-faced altar boy 
Still lights the candles at the Virgin's feet; 
And strange and sad and sweet 
The air is dim with long-dead incense-smoke: 
Wan Joseph draws his cloak. 
Faded and torn, still 'round the Holy Child; 
And woman-wise and mild 
Pure Mary bends her soft eyes to the floor, 
Where from the far-off door, 
Through which the sky looks and the green- 
branched trees, 
On bended, praying knees 
Sad penitents have worn a weary trail 
There to the altar rail. 

Down that old road of pain a woman glides ; 
The dim place hides 

[51] 



Her eyes that plead and lips that wince and 

pray: 
The saints that stay 

Up on the painted walls in the sweet dusk 
Of sandal-smoke and musk, 
And scent of withering altar flowers, and holy 

myrrh, 
Look down on her 

With pity — for a saint must understand. 
In one slim hand 

She bears a small, rude-shapen earthen jar, 
Whose roughness cannot mar 
The rare, green grace of the mimosa tree 
Whose lace-like tracery 
Of leaf and stem she touches as she prays. 
Suppliant she lays 

Her fingers gently, and each little leaf. 
Feeling her grief. 
Folds to its green mate like two hands in 

prayer : 
The branches share 

Her heart's hurt tremble, as if they would plead 
For her at need. 

Above the candles in her deep-niched place 
Pure Mary's face, 

Compassionate and tender, bids her speak. 
Entreating, passion-weak, 
The slow words come : " O Queen of Heaven ! 
Who yet on earth was even 



[52] 



Woman as I — hear this my woman's plea ; 

Grant this to me, — 

Thou in whose white breast a woman's heart 

hath beat. 
O Pure ! O Sweet ! 

Keep me, thy little one, still clean and pure. 
Let me endure 

All pain of life, so that thou make me strong. 
Hold me from wrong ; 
And as these leaves that tremble over-much 
Close at my touch. 

Shut thou my heart against this evil love. 
As the gray dove 

Beside the water pool would flee the snare, 
Keep me aware 

How he who seeks seeks not my soul at all. 
Which flies beyond his call ; 
But for his careless joy one idle hour 
Would bind his power 
Like Eve's snake round me, laughing as he 

crushed." 
There in the hushed. 
Sweet darkness, pierced by points of candle 

light 
Like stars at night. 

She left the green mimosa at the Virgin's feet, 
Continually to entreat 
Her soul's safety — then across the worn old 

floor 
She walked, with face transfigured, to the door. 

[53] 



POPPIES OF WICKENBURG 

Where Coronado's men of old 
Sought the Pecos' fabled gold 
Vainly many weary days, 
Now the land is all ablaze. 

Where the desert breezes stir, 
Earth, the old sun-worshiper, 
Lifts her shining chalices 
Up to tempt the priestly bees. 

Every golden cup is filled 
With a nectar sun-distilled; 
And the perfume. Nature's prayer, 
Sweetens all the desert air. 

Poppies, poppies, who would stray 
O'er the mountains far away. 
Seeking still Quivira's gold. 
When your wealth is ours to hold.'' 



[54] 



BOOT HILL 

In the old days of the Frontier, the cemetery in every 
town and mining camp was called "Boot Hill," because 
many of its inmates died, literally, '* With their boots 
on." Today these graveyards, with their sunken, half- 
obliterated graves, are all that is left of many a once- 
thriving camp. Their nameless dead are the drift that 
mark forgotten channels where once the tide of human 
life flowed full and strong. 

Go SOFTLY, you whose careless feet 

Would crush the sage brush, pungent, sweet, 

And brush the rabbit weed aside 

From burrows where the ground squirrels hide, 

And prairie dog his watch-tower keeps 

Among the ragged gravel heaps. 

Year long the wind blows up and down 

Each lessening mound, and drifts the brown, 

Dried wander-weed there at their feet — 

Who no more wander, slow or fleet. 

Sun-bleached, rain-warped, the head boards 

hold 
One story, all too quickly told: 
That here some wild heart takes its rest 
From spent desire and fruitless quest. 

Here in the greasewood's scanty shade 
How many a daring soul was laid! 
Boots on, full-garbed as when he died; 
The pistol belted at his side; 
The worn sombrero on his breast — 
To prove another man the best. 
Arrow or knife, or quick-drawn gun — 

[55] 



The glad, mad, fearless game was done, 

A life for stakes — play slow or fast — 

Win — lose — yet Death was trumps at last. 

Some went where bar-room tinsel flared, 
Or painted dance-hall wantons stared ; 
Some, where the lone, brown ranges bared 
Their parched length to a parching sky, 
And God alone might hear the cry 
From thirst-dried lips that, stiff and cold, 
Seemed still to babble: " Gold, gold, gold! " 
Woman, or wine, or greed, or Chance ; — 
A comrade's shot ; an Indian lance ; 
By camp or canon, trail or street — 
Here all games end; here all trails meet. 

The ground squirrels chatter in the sun; 
The dry, gray sage leaves, one by one. 
Drift down, close-curled, in odorous heaps; 
Above, wide-winged, a wild hawk sweeps ; 
And on the worn board at the head 
Of one whose name was fear and dread, 
A little, solemn ground owl sits. 
Ah, here the Man and Life are quits ! 
Go softly, nor with careless feet — 
Here all games end; here all trails meet. 



[56] 



THE DESERT QUEEN 



a 



Cereus Giganteus ; the Giant Cactus ' ' of the 
Southwest. 

I WAS Zenobia in the olden time 

And ruled the desert from Palmyra's walls ; 
I flung my challenge to imperial Rome 

So far that still across the years it calls 
In proud defiance — but my halls are dust ; 

The jackal suns him at the temple door; 
The wind-blown sands hide street and corridor 

And heap the palace floor. 

Forgotten is Aurelian and his might ; 

Above his grave the beggar children smile; 
And I, who swayed the East in other days. 

Am mistress now of many a Western mile: 
Crowned with a coronal of snowy flowers, 

And armed and guarded with a thousand 
spears, 
I dream — while dim mirages recreate 

In shimmering light the splendor of past 
years. 



[57] 



TO A HOME IN A CANON 

Strength of the mighty hills, and peace of 

them; 
Peace of white, silent peaks against the sky, 
And silence of far deserts gray and wide; 
Freedom of winds that blow in earth's lone 

places, 
And the brooding rest of night above the pines. 
Are in these walls ; eternal as the hills, 
The desert, and the wind that goes between. 
The hands will pass; the written word grow 

dim; 
The name an echo's echo faint and die; 
But when its farthest whisper is forgot 
These walls shall speak of human hope and love ; 
Shall say to unknown men in unguessed years : 
" Here one made truce with Time a little hour ; 
Fought, worked ; held hard-won victory — 

knew defeat ; 
Drained Life's cup from the bubbles to the lees 
And tossed it down and took him to the dust." 



[58] 



THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER 

For a third of a century William Reavis, the "Old 
Hunter," "The Hermit of Superstition Mountains," 
lived alone with his traps and rifle and burros, and 
died at last as he had lived: "Alone with the wind and 
the stars and the sky." In his life and death he was 
a type of frontiersman now passed and almost forgot- 
ten. 

Out! Carry me out! I choke in these cabin 
walls ! 
Lay me down on the earth under the wide 
night sky: 
Straight on the strong, clean earth — no idle 
blanket between; 
Cheek to cheek with the dust I will watch my 
last lean hour go by. 

Farther! Push back that bough till I face the 
stars : 
North star — Dipper — Pointer that still 
holds true; 
Many a night ye have led — through storm and 
wind-whipped cloud; 
Lead still, old guides — I line my last long 
course by you. 

Hark! The night wind sweeps through the 
crackling grass, 
Nosing the thin, sere weeds that hide in the 
prairie swale; 



[59] 



Rattling the hunted reeds that shiver and shrink 
in the marsh, 
With whimper and snarl and whine, like a 
hound that bays on the trail. 

Lift me up ! My soul hunts with you tonight. 
Old mate of a hundred trails ; speed on the 
eager pack; 
There was never a road ye knew too wild for my 
feet to take — 
Tonight they will keep the way when even ye 
turn back. 

Lift me up ! To my feet ! A hand-clasp each ! 
May your trail be long as mine — knife keen 
— and powder dry ! 
Eye true to the bead ! Now go — quick — 
while I keep my feet! 
I die as I lived — alone with the wind and 
the stars and the sky. 



[60] 



THE MASS OF MANGAS 

Mission San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson, Arizona, 

Years had the Mission stood alone, 

Its silent chapels bat-tenanted; 
On its altars the gray owl nested her young, 

And the ground squirrels burrowed above the 
dead 
By the western wall, nor stirred their sleep ; 

Bare lay the fields, sun-scorched and white ; — 
As black hawks scatter the timorous quail 

Padre and soldier and neophyte 

Scattered before the Apache hordes 

That swept the valley with death and flame — 
Now back at last like quail to their nests. 

Timorous, fearing, they slowly came. 
Priest and people ; to wring anew 

From the sullen desert a grudging chance 
For scanty food and room to toil, 

Or a quick-won end on a blood-stained lance. 

With fragrant branches of gray mesquite, 

And waxen yuccas fair and tall ; 
Lifting their bells like hands in prayer, 

Slender and snowy and virginal; 
And desert lilies as frail as hope, 

They wreathed the altars, and lit once more 
The long-dead altars, and set the rood 

Over the arrow-bitten door. 

[61] 



The pale Christ leaned from the iron-wood cross 

High in its niche deep-walled and gray; 
And under his feet, in order set, 

Censer and chalice in rough-wrought clay 
Where once was silver shaped in Spain — 

Now spoil of fight to the savage foe. 
And bandied from careless hand to hand 

Unblest uses and lips to know. 

The tapers flickered and tenderly 

The last words whispered and echoed up 
To the painted saints in the dusk above. 

As the padre lifted the earthen cup 
And the blessed wine — but crash it fell, 

Staining the floor with a crimson tide 
Unseen of the startled worshipers — 

For look! where the door unbarred swings 
wide! 

Sombre and splendid in paint and plume, 

With claws of eagle and puma skin, 
Mangas, the dread Apache chief, 

And a hundred braves at his back crowd in ; 
He swept the shards of the cup aside 

And its silver mate on the altar set: 
" Padre, the boy you stopped to draw 

From the lion's jaw makes good his debt. 

" With Death hot-heel on your track you turned 
To save a child of the enemy ; 

[62] 



Let these, beloved of your hidden God, 
Be bond of peace for mine and me ; 

And these in thanks for that other day." 
Censer and chalice he set them down. 

And bared his arms of their turquoise beads, 
And stripped the robe from his shoulders 
brown. 

Man by man his men heaped up 

The pile till it grew to the Virgin's feet ; 
Skin and blanket, and beads that hung 

Like jeweled buds in the pale mesquite. 
Then swift as they came they went again ; 

But, so 'tis writ in the Mission rolls. 
With wine and incense the padre straight 

Said holy mass for their heathen souls, 

And held them saved to the Mother Church; 

For a grateful heart is a thing indeed 
That weighed in the palm of the Savior's hand 

Out -values penance and prayer and creed; 
And year by year when the yucca bells 

Like flags of truce swung tall and white, 
The name of Mangas was blessed anew 

With book and taper and solemn rite. 



[63] 



THE WATER TANK AT DUSK 

(In the Harqua Hala desert.) 

The wild, bare, rock-fanged hills that all day 

long 
Shut in the hand-width valley from the world, 
Like wolfish out-posts which no foot might pass, 
Creep close as friendly dogs with head on paws 
And drowsy eyes that watch the evening fire. 
Their sun-baked, tawny brown melts into mist 
Of rose and violet and translucent blue. 
With gold dust powdered softly through the air 
That swims and shimmers as if all the earth 
Were carven jewels bathed in golden light. 
In the soft dusk the desert seems to pant. 
Only half -rested from the burning day; 
Yet stirs a little happily to feel 
The night wind, cool and gentle, whispering 
In the white-flowered mesquite where wild bees 

hum 
Delirious with honey sweets and fragrances ; 
And through the leafless thorn whose tortured 

boughs 
Were wreathed, men say, to crown the suffering 

Christ 
On his high cross. (And still each Passion Week 
The sorrowing tree wears buds like drops of 

blood 
In memory.) With swift, soft whirr of wings 
The gray doves flutter down beside the pool, 

[64] 



Cooing their love notes sweet as fairy flutes, 
And in the grass the fiddler-crickets chirp. 
The spotted night hawk saws his raucous note, 
Like some harsh rasp upon an o'er-drawn 

string ; 
The squeaking bats drop from the cotton-wood 

trees, 
Dipping and diving round the shining pool 
Where night moths hover like moon-elves 

astray. 
It seems the deep blue sky has fallen there 
In the blue, star-set water, where the wind 
Makes mimic waves that hardly over-toss 
The peach-leaf boat on which the dragon fly 
Rides sailor-wise to rest his gorgeous wings. 
The hot, dry, day-time scent of sun-burned sand 
Is drowned in sweetness of the blossoming 

grape. 
And pungent odour of the wax-white cups 
Of yerba mansa, hedging the blue pool 
With a green wall whose every flower 
Blooms twice, once on its tall-leafed stalk, and 

once 
Down where the waves like silver mirrors mix 
Its whiteness with the red pomegranate stars. 
In the shadow of the plume-branched tamerask 
There is a half -hushed, honey-throated call. 
And from the cotton-wood's topmost moonlit 

bough 
Music's enraptured soul seems waked to answer. 

[65] 



So sweet, so low, so pure, so tender-clear; 
So brimmed with joy; so wistful, plaintive-sad; 
As if all love o' the world pulsed in that throat ; 
As if all pain o' life beat in the heart below. 
It is the mocking bird to his brown mate, 
The desert's vesper song of rest and peace. 



[66] 



DOLORES' OLLA 

In Mexico the fiesta of San Juan, in the heart of June, 
is a time of sport and pleasure and love-making. The 
eve of All Soul's Night in November is a time of uni- 
versal prayer for the dead. Friendless indeed is the 
soul for which no word is uttered then, and dearest 
treasures go, if need be, to buy prayers and candles for 
the loved one's rest. 

SAN JUAn's day 

San Juan's Day in Guadalupe; the plaza is 
astir 
With caballeros bold and gay and senoritas 
shy, 
And Miguel the alfarero wends through the 
crowd to her, 
Dolores with the dusky eyes as soft as twi- 
lit sky. 

Dolores 'neath whose lightest touch his heart is 
like the clay ; 
Who molds him as he molds his wares upon 
the whirring wheel; 
Oh ! may the Saints be good to him on this aus- 
picious day, 
And grant him words to tell her all the love 
a man may feel. 

Mi alma, see, this oUa — how it flashes in the 
sun, 
And shimmers with the iris of paloma's 
dimpled breast! 

[67] 



Lift thou the lid and look within, querida, little 
one; 
My heart lies warm below your gaze as birds 
lie in the nest. 

ALi. soul's night 
** Ay de mi ! Valgame Dios ! Senor, but a mo- 
ment, stay ! 
The jar! The oUa! Will you buy it? Very 

little you shall pay. 
Look you, burnished green and copper, 

flecked with waves of rainbow light ; 
Miguel, best alfarero — Good saints keep his 

soul tonight! 
Miguel made it. Ah ! The padre — going to 

the mass so soon ! 
Pather, wait — a prayer for Miguel ! Mary, 

Mother, grant the boon ! — 
Senor, gracias! When the aves rise tonight 

for Miguel's rest. 
Know a woman in the darkness prays that 

you too may be blest." 



[68] 



NIGHT IN THE PINES 

It were mid-day one had said, with a brighter 
sun overhead, 
When a httle hush came steaHng through the 
branches swaying low; 
Such a space of silence tender as the pause that 
serves to render 
Some sweet music even sweeter in its pulsing 
after-flow. 

The gold-sifted light that rested on the bracken 
plumes green-crested, 
Shimmered faintly into silver on the diamond- 
dusted firs ; 
Upward where the mountain lifted one brown 
shoulder seamed and rifted, 
Grew a shadow 'gainst the sky line, softly as 
the shade that stirs 

Lightly o'er a sleeper dreaming ; — then the 
star lamps trimmed and gleaming, 
From the dim, blue dome near-bending 
flashed their jewelled radiance down: 
Where the timid aspens quiver gusty wind-puff^s 
start and shiver. 
Like the ghosts of wandering night elves 
rustling through the needles brown. 



[69] 



Night that elsewhere silently lays her spell on 
land and sea, 
Soothing restless souls to quiet in the shadow 
of her wings, 
Here with hushing tone and slow through the 
rocking pines croons low 
Earth-old lullabies as tender as a watching 
mother sings. 

Rest ye, weary hearts and lone; lean ye down 
against mine own; 
Put aside the fret of living and be glad in 
dreamless sleep; 
Lose awhile the vain regretting in the balm of 
sweet forgetting — 
Or remember but the promise that the com- 
ing mornings keep. 



[70] 



THE DESERT 

That silence which enfolds the Great Beyond 
Broods in these spaces where the yucca palms 
Like gray old votaries chant unworded psalms, 
Grand, voiceless harmonies where-to the 
Heavens respond. 

Lone, vast, eternal as Eternity, 

The brown wastes crawl to clutch the wrinkled 

hills, — 
Till night lets down her solemn dusk and fills 
The waiting void with haunting mystery. 

Here Solitude hath made her dwelling place, 
As when of old amid untrodden sands. 
Slow- journeying, wise men of all alien lands 
Sought at her feet life's hidden roads to trace. 

All ways of earth, still glad or sad they go, 
The roads of life — till breath of man shall 

cease — 
Silent, the desert keeps her ancient peace. 
And that last secret which the dead may know. 



[71] 



THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO 

This poem is founded upon an incident in Colonel 
Doniphan's campaign with the Army of the West in 
1846-47. The battle of Sacramento was fought Feb. 
28, 1847; the Mexican army, accompanied by the gov- 
ernor and leading citizens of Chihuahua, had taken a 
strong position in the rocky foothills of the Sierra de Vic- 
toriano, and there awaited Colonel Doniphan who had 
about nine hundred men. The Mexican army numbered 
2200 men, with heavy artillery and entrenched. They 
expected to rout the Americans at the first fire, and 
amused themselves with feasting and sports while await- 
ing their approach. 

Colonel Doniphan was compelled to make his attack 
across a small plain in full range of the artillery and 
cut by a deep gulch which offered a serious stay to the 
charge. Just as the column halted on its brink some of 
the men saw a bald eagle hovering over the plain and 
set up a shout of "Victory ! The eagle !" They charged 
up the hill, sweeping the Mexican army before them, 
with the loss of but one man. Major Owens, who was 
shot from his horse. 

The Chihuahuan army lost 1100 men and all stores, 
sheep, cattle, hard bread, and much silver coin. Sev- 
eral wagons were found filled with ropes cut in lengths 
with which to tie the captured Americans. The gov- 
ernor, citizens, and army fled in confusion back to the 
city of Chihuahua, which was occupied by Doniphan's 
troops and held for some weeks. 

The Hills of Victoriano were gay that winter 

morning ; 
Chihuahuan gentlemen looked down tricked 

out in brave array ; 
When Trial with the ebon flag rode forth to 

give us warning. 
" Your leader " — " Come and take him — ■ and 

luck be yours the day ! " 



[72] 



" No quarter to the Gringo " ! the skull and 

cross-bones fluttered; 
Four thousand throats took up the yell, the 

echoes flung it back; 
How boastfully, exultantly, the taunting 

threat they uttered — 
As coyotes bold with number yelp round a 

gray wolf's pack. 

Nine hundred men in buckskin, in patches 

and in tatters ; 
Lean and hungry as the deserts we had 

traversed wearily ; 
But little versed in pipe clay, in gold lace 

and such matters — 
Only our bare brown rifles to match their 

pageantry. 
There on the hills above us the proud 

senores gathered 
As for some rare fiesta, laughed with their 

men below; 
" Now by the flag they jest at they'll pray they 

ne'er were fathered; 
Their jaunty coats shall sit awry ere this 

day's sun is low." 

Their peons manned the cannon, their rab- 
ble filled the trenches — 

We were too mean a crew to soil the hands 
of gentlemen ; 

[73] 



Their mocking words they fling at us, till 

Mitchell fiercely clenches 
His fist and shouts : "Now, rangers ! Sweep 

the vermin from their den ! " 
Barred with a rain-washed guUey the hill 

sloped up before us; 
A deep-worn trench too wide to leap and like 

to cost us dear ; 
Just on its edge we halted — broad wings 

were hovering o'er us — 
" An omen ! Look ! the eagle ! " uprose a mighty 

cheer. 

With one wild charge we crossed the gulch, 

half on our comrades' shoulders. 
And, the great bald eagle leading, stormed 

up the rocky hill; 
Their grape went wide below us, or crashed 

among the bowlders. 
And when our rifles spoke them back the 

beaten guns were still: 
We scared them from their cover, we sent the 

peons flying; 
We turned on them the cannon they had not 

wit to fire; 
What way the battle led us was strewn with 

dead and dying. 
And we heaped their gaudy trappings to feed 

the funeral pyre. 



[74] 



One knee around the saddle horn, half loung- 
ing in his saddle, 
Sat Doniphan, and whistled as he whittled 

carelessly. 
Shaping a cedar splinter to a rough-turned 

wooden paddle : — 
" With my compliments to Trial for his pirate 

flag," said he. 
The flag was torn and trampled and the 

throats that cried " No quarter ! " 
Were silent on the bloody field or sullen in 

defeat ; 
The ropes they'd cut to bind our hands we 

cut again still shorter, 
And we bound the fleeing stragglers as we 

caught them in retreat. 

Back on the road where late they came with 
pomp and jest and laughter, 

They fled, the governor leading, to Chihua- 
hua's very gate; 

And in their gay-decked carriages our 
rangers followed after. 

Or on their prancing horses rode down in 
martial state. 

What spoil was ours for taking — bread and 
corn and sheep and cattle! 

How the " Gringo beggars " feasted on the 
feast the Dons had spread! 



[75] 



And the priest Ortiz who cursed us and 

reviled us through the battle, 
Was left to scare the vultures and say masses 

for the dead. 

We had three score captured cannon, guns 

and gun mules all together ; 
Our saddle bags were heavy with peso and 

doubloon ; 
We had bridles silver-studded and carved of 

Spanish leather — 
Ah! well we turned the tale of them that 

boasted all too soon ! 
And well we cheered the eagle till the hills 

above us thundered; 
We set the old cathedral bells to peal tri- 
umphantly — 
And in the gray old plaza, while our prisoners 

scoffed and wondered. 
We shamed our sullen foemen when we gave 

them amnesty. 



[76] 



CACTUS AND ROSE 

She wore red roses as a queen 

Her jewels when she wills to shine; 
She pressed one full bud to her lips, 

The while she bent her eyes to mine: 
" Were not life cheap for such a flower? " 

Was it by chance her fingers strayed 
So near my own? But ere the touch 

The tempter in my blood was stayed. 

A mist was on the laughing eyes, 

It veiled her soft, enticing grace ; 
Beyond her lure of gold and blue 

A tender, shadowy, haunting face 
Grew like a star in twilit skies 

When evening fades to rarer light; 
Again I saw the cactus flowers, 

Blood red, in braids as black as night. 

Again we paced the earthen floor 

In waiting measure, till the dance 
Swept to its swift and dizzy whirl; 

And there were eyes that looked askance 
Because her brown hand lay in mine 

Like some small, gentle, brown-winged bird; 
And there were hearts had given life 

For that one shy, low-spoken word 



[77] 



That made the night so more than dear; 

That set mj years to one strange tune 
Of footfalls on the hard-beat earth, 

And soft guitar and low-hung moon ; 
And wind that whispered through the roof's 

Rude thatch of branches interlaced; 
And bare, dark, earthen walls whereon 

The leaping fireHght roughly traced 

Her shadow, swaying as we danced. — 

Then morning came, as calm and pale 
As some dead face where tapers shine; 

And through the tule reeds the quail 
Called mournfully — as if they knew 

No other night would ever be 
So dear, so rare, so blessed of God, 

From sunrise to eternity. 

White-robed as any bride she lay; 

Like weary stars the tapers shone; 
And what I vowed in that dim place 

Was vowed to her dead heart alone: 
I went forth old, that had been young; 

But still I keep till life's last hour 
The quail call through the tule reeds. 

And one dead, crumbling, cactus flower. 



[•rs] 



OUR LADY OF MIRAGE 

She walks across the desert and the shuttle in 

her hand 
Weaves out behind her webs of light that 

clothe the shifting sand; 
Where her swift footstep passes strange, 

shadowy cities rise, 
And chartless seas roll shoreward where never 

sea-shore lies ; 
And where no house was builded nor ever home 

shall be 
Stretch green and peaceful homelands with ten- 
der witchery: 
Like flowers that bend to greet her soft colors 

glow and gleam 
Of gardens never tended beside an unknown 

stream ; 
And there like silver shadows move women 

gentle-eyed, 
And children run before them and lovers walk 

beside ; 
And all that life has banished and all that love 

has missed 
Comes in that mystic vision to keep a holy tryst. 
The restless winds are music, the shifting sands 

reveal 
The truth beyond the substance, the dream for- 
ever real — 
Across life's poorest barrens, o'er desert waste 

and slope, 
She weaves her bright illusions, the blest mirage 

of hope. 

[79] 



THE MAID OF TUCANO 

Some jears ago a small agate carved with the head 
of a woman was found in a pre-historic mound near 
Phoenix, Arizona. More recently the explorations made 
by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes at Casa Grande have proven 
these mounds to have been the communal homes of a 
considerable people, of whom the Pima Indians of the 
region retain some traditions. Based somewhat upon 
the carved agate and with a slight thread of tradition 
in it the poem is still mostly fanciful. 

Fair lies the vale of Tucano, 

Rich Heart of the Land of the Sun; 
Broad spread its emerald mesas, 

Sparkling its bright waters run; 
Far spread the golden-plumed maize fields, 

With orchard and garden between, 
To where like sentinels watching 

The pines of the uplands lean. 

Here in the days long forgotten 

Ruled Che-he-ah-pik the Chief, 
And here lived a maid of his people, 

Fair in her love and her grief. 
Sister in grace to the yuccas. 

Swaying white-chaliced and tall; 
But her heart was the heart of the snow- 
flower 

That blooms on the high mountain wall; 

Far from the reach of the many, 

Who mar with the dust of their feet 
And the plucking of idle fingers 

[80] 



Blossoms that else were sweet. 
Yet the fleet-footed, venturesome climber 

May win to the snowy peaks ; 
And to him who is true in his loving 

At last turns the love that he seeks. 

When the signal-smoke rose on the mountain 

Like a gray banner tossed in the wind, 
Or the watch fires at night glimmered star- 
like 

Against the grim darkness behind; 
The Chief said : " My forts are still holden, 

No enemy strives at the pass ; " 
But the maid with eyes misty and tender 

Looked upward and whispered " Alas ! 

"For the distance that lieth between us! 
O Heart of my Heart ! Do you dream 
Of me here in the vale as you wander 

By rock-riven canon and stream, 
Where in childhood we gathered the pine nuts, 

Or plundered the blue pigeon's nest. 
Or standing knee deep in the bracken 

Watched the sun burn to gold in the 
west? 

" The red roses bloom for my taking, 
But fairer the roses we knew. 
Swaying over the cliffs in the spring time, 
Their pale blossoms dappled with dew; 

[81] 



And sweet is the mocking bird's music, 
And the laughter in garden and hall; 

But sweeter the wind in the pine trees 
And the slow-pacing sentinel's call."* 

So the maiden dreamed, twining the garlands 

To lay on the Harvest God's shrine, 
And mingling the fruits of the lowland 

With balsamic cedar and pine; 
Till the chief on his roof-terrace lying 

A-weary of rule and of sport, 
Let his gaze idly rest on the worker. 

Alone in the old temple court. 

The gray walls seemed bright with her 
presence, 

As when a stray moonbeam illumes 
With its silvery radiance the shadow 

That darkens in desolate rooms: 
Soft-crooning a melody tender, 

And low with her home-longing grief. 
She turned at a footstep and, startled. 

Looked up from the flowers to the chief. 

Smiling into her dark eyes that questioned 
He raised the fresh garlands, " Now see 

How each blossom you touch, making sweeter, 
Is robbed of its sweets by a bee. 

Can you wonder that I, being stronger. 
And you than the blossoms more sweet, 

[82] 



« 



Was drawn like the bees to the honey 
And found myself here at your feet? 

Leave the garlands to fingers less slender, 

These rough walls to faces less fair, 
And come where love laughs in the sunshine, 

And joy waits to welcome you there; 
Here is silence and service and shadow. 

There is music and gladness and light, 
And I, who am chief to all others. 

Will serve you and love you to-night." 

Nay, your bees seek the garden buds only; 

Scant honey the cactus flowers hold; 
Nor careless hands linger to pluck them, 

For all of their crimson and gold ; 
Desert born with the birthright of freedom. 

They wither and fade in the close, 
As I pine in the garden-set valley 

For the breath of the hills and the snows. 



" Think you love can be bought with a jewel? 

Or caught in the net of a name? 
Or a black mountain eaglet held captive 

Sing sweet as your mocking bird tame? 
Like to like — go you back to your roses; 

For me, warrior's daughter and bride. 
Fitter home is the cloud-beaten fortress 

Than here by the green river side. 

[83] 



" When the feast of the Harvest is over 

Comes one whom you fighting-men know, 
Whose station was won at the spear point, 

Whose fortune is bent with the bow; 
Stem guard of your battle-swept passes, 

As free as the winds are and bold ; 
Yet with honor and truth above jewels, 

And faithfulness dearer than gold. 

" So farewell! Nor remember the madness 

That tempted your fancy and hour; 
Know no bud ever swells in the desert 

But thorns hedge the heart of the flower." 
Che-he-ah-pik passed out of the courtyard 

And seeking with wonder-lit face 
A keen-fingered carver of gem stones. 

He bade him to cunningly trace 

On red agate the head of the worker, 
And set it his necklace within; 
*' So shall those who forget me remember 
The love that a chief could not win." 



Dust is the Harvest God's altar; 

Naught of his people is known — 
Only the face of the maiden 

Carved on the red agate stone. 



[84] 



A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL 

My heart was weary yesterday; 

I said : " The road is long ; 
The busy hum of middle day 

Shuts out the morning song; 
The rush of careless, hurrying feet 

That crowd the upward slope, 
Have crushed the daisies into dust. 

And spent the dews of hope." 

Then straight within the trampled path 

The eager throng had trod, 
A little purple flower unclosed, 

Nor pined for greener sod : 
And one whose load had weighed him sore 

Looked down at it and smiled, 
And dreamed of woodland trails he loved 

To follow when a child. 

So still when bitterness and fret 

Would drown the melody, 
Some little harmony steals in 

To set the music free ; 
And we may keep till day is done 

The morning dreams we knew, 
If ever in our hearts there live 

The daisies and the dew. 



[85] 



THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS 

The occultation of Venus and the moon, in March, 
1899, was wonderfully beautiful and impressive as seen 
in the desert. 

A JEWELED crown for an old man's brow, 
That mystical, splendid, tropic sky 
Arched low o'er the desert, reaching far 
Its weary leagues wind-parched and dry: 
So bare and lone and sad it lay. 
The gray old land that seemed to yearn 
With a human longing for some caress 
From its granite barriers, grim and stern. 

Shouldering up to the very stars 

The strong peaks lifted their solemn might; 

And through their rock-gapped pinnacles 

burned 
The wondrous glory that charmed the night. 
Like a giant's scimeter wrought in gold 
The late moon rose in the dawn-touched east, 
And close beside white Venus shone. 
As once she shone on shrine and priest. 

Like a soul's white flame the planet passed — 
Alone the moon rode proud and high — 
O wait of God ! the lost star swung 
A silver sphere in the hither sky ; — 
(Is it so, O Life, that thy light is lost 
In the disk of Death if we could but know?) 
And the old land blushed with sudden youth 
In the tender fire of the morning-glow. 

[86] 



A FOREST LULLABY 

Wind among the green leaves singing, 

Bend the branches as jou go; 
Gently, gently, that their swinging 

Hush the little heart below ; 
Still the busy little fingers, 

Softly close the dark-fringed eyes, 
For no gleam of daylight lingers 

In the dusky, twilight skies. 

Silver stars, come peeping, peeping. 

Weaving with your shining beams. 
Round my drowsy blossom sleeping. 

Fairy spells of happy dreams: 
Lullaby, O captive rover, 

All your playmates are at rest; 
Bees have left the scented clover. 

Baby birds are in the nest. 

Little rabbits warmly cuddle 

In the grasses soft and deep ; 
And the wee white daisies huddle 

In the shadow fast asleep: 
Lullaby my bird, my blossom; 

Sleep my light-winged butterfly. 
Cradled safe on earth's brown bosom 

Till the morning you shall lie. 



[87] 



THE COLORADO RIVER 

Long, silent leagues of ever-shifting sand, 
White-hot and shimmering to the distant hills 
Where wheeling slow the whirlwind dips and 

fills, 
Or beckons like some shadowy, giant hand. 
Gray wisps of greenwood and mesquite that 

stand 
In withered patches like an old man's beard, 
Ragged and grizzled: nearer, dark and weird, 
The river slips along the cringing land. 
Swift to possess and loath to give again. 
Foam-ribbed and sullen, staggering with the 

weight 
Of forests spoiled, he takes his price in full, 
Stern toll for every drop to land and men; 
In witness there — Poor pawn of love or hate ! — 
Caught in a drift a grinning human skull. 



[88] 



THE END OF THE TRAIL 

Sunset — and the end of the Trail; 

Here the last faint footsteps fail 

And I go on alone 

Into the untracked ways ; 

I who in other days 

Blazed many a road straight up 

To the peaks that touch the sun — 

But now is the climbing done. 

No more to my feet the trail ; 
No more to my hand the rein; 
No more — Ah! never again 
The sun and the wind, and free! 
The far stars over me! 
As the Wilderness called I went; 
Now deep and solemn and low 
A Mightier calls — and I go. 

Nor guide nor compass nor sign; 

Face out, to the uttermost dark ; 

And the wind in the strong boughs — Hark ! 

Paean and dirge for a king! 

Life, I have loved you well ; 

Forget the rest when you tell — 

This soul did not falter, nor quail, 

Nor shrink at the end of the Trail. 



[89] 



THE RANGE RIDER 

Up and saddle at daybreak, 

Into the hills with the light, 
While still on pinon and cedar 

Lingers the wings of night ; 
Clatter of hoofs in the canon. 

Scatter of horns on the trail ; 
Dim forms lost in the chaparral. 

Fleeing like frightened quail. 

Follow ! the deer behind them 

Pant in a beaten race; 
Light in its flight is slower 

Than a mountain steer in chase. 
'Ware ! That black bull charges ; 

Head down, red eyes aglow; 
Crack! Crack! the pistol flashes — 

God, but a noble foe! 

His black bulk reels from the pathway, 

The horses reek and sweat; 
Unsaddle a space and breathe them. 

The day's before us yet: 
Look back from our bed of bracken 

Here on the world's green roof. 
You'd lie at less ease in the green below 

But for pistol and sure-set hoof. 

What! Is your nerve so shaken.? 
A man can die but once! 

[90] 



Who shirks the game for the chance-sent end 
Is a coward soul, or a dunce. — 

The turn of a loose-cinched saddle, 
The plunge of a keen-curved horn — 

Play down to-day — and to-morrow 
Who cares that we were born ! 



[91] 



THE YUCCA PALMS 

Gray pilgrims without pouch or staff, 
Or dust-stained robe, or cockle shell; 

Seek ye the path to some lost shrine 
Here in the desert grim as Hell? 

No arched cathedral dome bends down ; 

The earth is iron, the sky is brass ; 
'Tis ages since these blistered sands 

Forgot the touch of flower and grass. 

Stern penance do ye for old wrongs 
Mayhap, or saintship seek from pain; 

With suppliant hands that never win 
The benison of cooling rain. 

In beggar rags like that wild throng 
That once in old Perugia stood, 

Ye bear your serried scourges high, 
A flagellante brotherhood. 



[92] 



IN THE BRACKEN. 

Scent of the pine on the hilltops. 

Rush of the mountain breeze, 
And long, deep slopes of bracken fern 

Like sun-lit emerald seas. 

Gray old rocks where the lizards hide 
And chattering chipmunks play; 

Where the brown quail leads her timorous 
brood 
Through the fronds that bend and sway. 

Home of the doe and her spotted fawns, 

(Shyest of woodland things.) 
Haunt of the hawks that dip and dive 

On circling, fearless winds. 

The skies bend down with a deeper blue 
Where the white clouds drift and hover; 

And the tall peaks drowse in the golden haze 
That dapples their forest cover. 

The needles whisper an endless song 
As the brown cones bend and nod: 
" O rest, O rest, with the bracken and pine 
In the strong, green hills of God." 



[93] 



ARIZONA 

In his message of December, 1905, President Roose- 
velt advised that Arizona and New Mexico be admitted 
to the Union as one state. In Arizona the opposition to 
this "joint-statehood" measure was bitter and deter- 
mined. 

No BEGGAR she in the mighty hall where her 

bay-crowned sisters wait, 
No empty-handed pleader for the right of a 

free-born State; 
No child, with a child's insistance, demanding 

a gilded toy ; 
But a fair-browed, queenly woman, strong to 

create or destroy. 
Wise for the need of the sons she has bred 

in the school where weaklings fail; 
Where cunning is less than manhood, and 

deeds, not words, avail: 
With the high, unswerving purpose that 

measures and overcomes; 
And the faith in the Farthest Vision that 

builded her hard- won homes. 

Link her, in her clean-proved fitness, in her 
right to stand alone, — 

Secure for whatever future in the strength 
that her past has won, — 

Link her, in her morning beauty, with an- 
other, however fair.'* 

And open your jealous portal and bid her 
enter there 

[94] 



With shackles on wrist and ankle and dust 

on her stately head, 
And her proud eyes dim with weeping? No! 

Bar your doors instead 
And seal them fast forever! But let her go 

her way — 
Uncrowned, if you will, but unshackled, to 

wait for a larger day. 

Ay! let her go bare-handed; bound with no 

grudging gift; 
Back to her own free spaces, where her rock- 
ribbed mountains lift 
Their walls like a sheltering fortress; back 

to her house and blood ; 
And we of her blood will go our way and 

reckon your judgment good. 
We will wait outside your sullen door till 

the stars you wear grow dim 
As the pale dawn-stars that swim and fade 

o'er our mighty Canon's rim; 
We will lift no hand for the bays ye wear nor 

covet your robes of state — 
But ah! By the skies above us all we will 

shame ye while we wait ! 

We will make ye the mould of an empire here 
in the land ye scorn ; 

While ye drowse, and dream in your well- 
housed ease that States at your nod are 
born. 

[95] 



Ye have blotted your own beginnings, and 

taught your sons to forget 
That ye did not spring fat-fed and old from 

the powers that bear and beget; 
But the while ye follow your smooth-made 

roads to a fireside safe of fears, 
Shall come a voice from a land still young to 

sing in your age-dulled ears 
The hero song of a strife as fine as your 

father's fathers knew. 
When they dared the rivers of unmapped 

wilds at the will of a bark canoe. 

The song of the deed in the doing; of the 

work still hot from the hand; 
Of the yoke of man laid friendly-wise on the 

neck of a tameless land. 
While your merchandise is weighing we will 

bit and bridle and rein 
The floods of the storm-rocked mountains and 

lead them down to the plain ; 
And the foam-ribbed, dark-hued waters, tired 

with that mighty race. 
Shall lie at the feet of palm and vine and 

know their appointed place; 
And out of that subtle union, desert with 

mountain flood. 
Shall be homes for a nation's choosing, 

where no home else had stood. 



[96] 



We will match the gold of your minting, 

with its mint-stamp dulled and marred 
By the blood and tears that have stained it, 

and the hands that have clutched too hard. 
With the gold that no man has lied for; the 

gold no woman has made 
The price of her truth and honor, plying a 

shameless trade: 
The clean, pure gold of the mountains, 

straight from the strong, dark earth; 
With no tang or taint upon it from the hour 

of its primal birth. 
The trick of the Money-changer, shifting his 

coins as he wills. 
Ye may keep — no Christ was bartered for 

the wealth of our lavish hills. 

" Yet we are a little people — too weak for the 

cares of state!" 
Let us go our way — when ye look again ye 

may find us, mayhap, too great. 
Cities we lack — and gutters where children 

snatch for bread: 
Numbers — and hordes of starvelings, toiling 

but never fed. 
Spare pains that would make us greater in 

the pattern that ye have set; 
We hold to the larger measure of the men 

that ye forget — 



[97] 



The men who from trackless forests and prai- 
ries lone and far, 

Hewed out the land where ye sit at ease and 
grudge us our fair-won star. 

There yet be men, my masters," — though the 

net that the trickster flings 
Lies wide on the land to its bitter shame, and 

his cunning parleyings 
Have deafened the ears of Justice, that was 

blind and slow of old: 
Yet Time, the last Great Judge, is not 

bought, or bribed, or sold; 
And Time and the Race shall judge us — not 

a league of trafficking men, 
Selling the trust of the people to barter it 

back again; 
Palming the lives of millions as a handful of 

easy coin — 
With a single heart to the narrow verge 

where Craft and State-craft join. 



[98] 



CAMP-FIRE TALES 



THE HASH-WRASTLER 

Being the story of the Hfe and death of the camp 
cook; as told by an old cow puncher. 

Of course the boss he carries some weight, 

tho' the owner's a figger-head; 
(Handy fer signin' checks an' sich — 

the Lord in His pity makes some folks rich ! 
Fortune at best's a skittish bitch as'U neither 

be drove er led; 
An' "A fool fer luck!" is a standing rule, 

which I reckon Solomon said.) 

There's some as growed on the own home 

range, an' some as was vented young; 
An' I've knowed buckaros as can't be beat 

that wrastled the Greaser tongue; 
An' there's now an' again a tenderfoot the 

cinches don't seem to rub; 
But the man that the outfit hitches to is the 

man that hustles the grub. 

It ain't no cinch in the summer time to tighten 

a hungry belt. 
When yer horse is lathered an' steamin' hot, 

an' ye think yer goin' to melt ; 
But that old chuck wagon's a bigger throne 

than the Czar of Rushy owns 
When you've punched a blizzard from dark 

to dark, an' the marrer chilled in yer bones. 

[101] 



Yer chaps is froze to the saddle skirts an' the 

froth on yer bridle white, 
An' the sigh ye let it ain't no bluff when that 

camp-fire heaves in sight ; 
An' ye see him grab np the coffee pot an' 

rattle the lid like sin ; 
An' holler away to beat the band: "Grub 

pile! Fa-all in! Fa-a-all in!" 

It's then that ye know yer friend o' friends, 

an' that wrastler gits his due — 
In cussin' an' sich — f er a haloed saint couldn't 

cook to suit the crew. 
It's : "Slushy, say, yer off yer base ; them 

biskits is dough inside. 
Did ye bile the critter that Noah milked, or 

only her horns an' hidcf^" 

" Stove .^^ " Oh, sure! A hole in the ground on 

the leeward side of the camp ; 
The end-gate dropped fer a kneadin' board, 

an' 1 "ne grease an' rag fer a lamp : 
But his <i was slammin' by three o'clock, 

along rvith the bosses snore; 
A-knowin' we'd polish his skillets clean an' 

yell possessed fer more. 

There was me an' Jim an' Otero's Kid, I 

reckon we didn't make 
That wrastler's life one shinin' round of 

lemon pie an' cake: 

[102] 



But he paid us ofF as slick an' clean as ever a 

debt was paid — 
An' I low if our pull was better Beyond he'd 

git some boot on the trade. 

The fall rodear was all but done an' the beef 

steers waitin' to ship, 
When it seemed that the Kid an' me an' Jim 

was booked fer a longer trip. 
Smallpox — an' the way them boys lit out was 

worse'n the worst stampede 
Of buffaloed steers on a rainy night the Old 

Trail ever seed. 

All but that lank-jawed slinger o' pots, that 

blamed hash-wrastlin' fool; — 
" I'm runnin' this camp — you tend to biz ;" he 

says, as stiddy an' cool 
As a chunk of ice on a Christmas tree — an' I 

reckon we didn't dispute; 
Fer the Kid an' me was as crazy as loons, an' 

Jim on the cut an' shoot. 

He tied Jim up with a hackamore, an' he 
pulled the three of us through — 

But I swear when I think o' the way things 
went, an' him, I feel plumb blue ; 

Fer that same disease jist doused his glim as 

quick as you'd holler "Scat !" 
Jist cut him out an' afore we knew he was 

gone like the drop of a hat. 

[ 103 ] 



" Th' boys is comin'," he says quite wild ; "an* 
them beans ain't seasoned right; 
An' Jim'U kick at th' bread an' say th' coffee's 

a holy fright. 
You tell 'em" — he fingered the kiverlid, an' 
his words come choked an' thin — 
" Reddy jist to th' minnit, boys — Grub pile! 
Fa-a-Uin! Fa-a-U in!" 



[104] 



WATCH 

The Old Prospector's dog 

What's that ye say? That yaller dog 
Ain't killed with handsomeness, ye low? 

Well, he ain't travellin' on his shape, 
I tell ye that right here an' now. 

Ye wouldn't have him foUerin' you, 
Ner be ketched dead with him beside? 

Well, I don't want no better pard 

When I tramp up the Great Divide. 

The beauty club shied off I guess 
An' hit him pretty middlin' light; 

But looks don't fill no empty tanks — 
An' plain old stay^s what wins a fight. 

An' that dog's got the stayin' powers 
A long sight more'n the most o' men ; 

He's just clean grit an' "stay there" mixed, 
An' don't ask no odds how an' when. 

'Twas crossin' of the Plomas Range; 

I'd made a right big strike, ye see. 
An' ever' loafer in the camp 

Was hangin' round an' watchin' me. 

So thinks I : " You'd better pull your freight 
Between two suns an' cache that dust, 

[105] 



Unless ye want some knife to let 

Th' daylight in through your ol' crust." 

Well, me an' Watch an' my ol' mule 

Jest humped ourselves fer three hull days, 

An' then, sez I : "We'll rest, ol' pard ; 
Nobody's follered us this ways." 

So I just cooks a bit o' grub 

An' lays right down an' goes to snorin', 
An' never knows another thing 

Untell I hear ol' Watch a-roarin'. 

I jumped right up an' into Hell — 

A pair o' Greasers chokin' me. 
An' punchin' of me with a knife- 



Another'n fightin' Watch — an he 

Jest looks at me an' keeps a-chawin' 
The rascal's throat, an' gr'" in' low 

As if to say: "Hold on, '-^ .'d — 
I'm comin' soon's I git a siww." 

I fit an' scratched an' dodged that knife — 
An' then my foot slipped on a stone 

An' things looked dark — but next I knowed 
01' Watch was playin' it alone. 



He dropped his man an' tackled mine- 
An' when my head got clear agin 

[106] 



I see a pile o' rags an' truck 

Where them three Greaser thieves had bin. 

An' that ol' dog was guardin' me, 
An' lickin' of my hands an' face — 

An' him just red with drippin' blood — 
There wasn't nary yaller place 

On his ol' hide frum head to foot. 

I'se most as bad — but I caught that mule 
An' somehow histed me an' Watch 

Up on 'er back — the night was cool — 

An' we lit out — an' long near day 
I hear 'way off a rooster crowin' — 

An' jest what happened after that 
I haint no certain way o' knowin' ; 

Fer next I knowed I hear a voice 

That kep' a tellin' me: "Be still- 
Jest swaller this here mighty quick, 
An' when ye've et an' drunk yer fill 

I'll let ye talk. Th' dog, ye say.? 

Oh ! he's all right — he saved yer skin ; 
Come howlin' here 'fore break o' day. 

An' we lit out an' brung ye in — 

Him leadin' right to where you lay — 
Down crost th' wash an' up th' hill — 

[107] 



Live? Course he'll live- Now you ho? on — 
This haint your talk — ^you jes' keep still." 

So I lays still — an' Watch does too — 

Jest sort o' laid up fer repairs, 
Fer weeks an' weeks — till last we got 

As hearty as a pair o' bears. 

Then we lit out — a-headin' straight 
Back to th' ol' home in Mizzury — 

An' me an' Watch'll settle down 

An' take our ease, I jest assure ye. 

An' any feller that thinks our looks 
Haint up to par, ner apt to mash 

Th' most o' folks, kin have his say — 
But me an' Watch has got th' cash. 

An' its cash that counts — clean cash an' grit; 

An' Watch has got th' grit, I low. 
An' me th' cash — an' we two's pards — 

But he's th' best I tell ye now. 

An' when Life's fight is fit an' done. 
An' we go crost th' Great Divide, 

W'y Watch an' me has made it up 
That we'll be planted side by side. 



[108] 



MONTE BILL 

As told by the old stage driver 

See that big black zahuaro* 

Out there alone on the hill, 
With the sand piled up at its sun-bleached 
roots ? 

Well, there lies Monte Bill. 
Rough? Well I reckon you'd think so! 

A devil to cut an' shoot; 
He'd face all the men in Creation, 

An' the fiends in Hell to boot. 

His business.? Oh! that was the pasteboards, 

They was just the whole o' his game ; 
An' he handled 'em like greased lightnin' — 

That's how he got his name. 
(An' a name is a durned poor measure 

When you're weighin' th' worth of a man ; 
An' you can't go all by his business 

To git at his clean ground plan.) 

Bill was stagin' it up from Ehrenberg — 

I was drivin' the six that fall! 
It was hotter'n all tarnation 

An' the desert shut in like a wall; 
The mirage it was sloshin' an' shinin' 

Like the water before an' behind; 
An' the dust in your throat near chokin'. 

An' burnin' your eyes fair blind. 

*Giant cactus of the Southwest 

[ 109 ] 



They was only two other passengers 

A-making the trip that day; 
A little mite of a woman, 

An' a child like a bird at play: 
She was goin' up to Fort Whipple, 

Were an officer's wife, she said. 
An' the way her baby took to Bill 

Just mighty near turned his head. 

We was joggin' along through a sand-wash, 

An' talkin' an' laughin' the while, 
An' nobody s'posed an Apache 

Was nearer'n fifty miles; 
But the time that ye think yer safest 

It's good to be sayin' a prayer. 
An' the yell that come from a patch o' mesquite 

Plumb raised the roots o' my hair. 

Bill gobbled the situation — 

Took it all to onct at a glance; 
An' to save that woman an' baby 

He saw they was just one chance. 
He yelled up the boot to warn me, 

An' out o' the side he jumped. 
An' I swung the whip an' swore for life, — 

An' I tell ye them six bronks humped. 

Bill lit on his feet an' runnin' 

An' down by a greasewood dropped — 
He knowed he had nary a show to beat 

[110] 



But he wasn't the breed that stopped. — 
An' the rest? Well, CuUin's station 

Was a long ten mile away ; 
'Twas a run with Death — but that baby 

An' woman wan't hurt that day. 

An' Bill.? Well, it's no good talkin'— 

You know what Apaches is ! 
An' a man that they git their claws on 

Had better take Hell for his- 
When the troop from old Camp Date Creek 

Grot to him they came too late — 
Just a smolderin' pile of ashes 

Was left to tell his fate. 

We dug out a grave on the hillside 

An' filled it with cactus an' stones; 
For we didn't want the kiotes 

To chaw what was left of his bones: 
An' that " giant " growed up above him, 

An' the wind piled the sand below — 
But I reckon as how old Bill don't care, 

For he's gone where brave men go. 



[Ill] 



BEYOND THE DESERT 



THE GREATER FLAG 

Fling out its folds to the winds of earth from 
every crest and crag, 

Roll strong salute from a million throats to 
honor this greater flag ; 

The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a wider 
trust. 

From the Arctic snow-peaks circling to the sun- 
scourged desert dust: 

Flower of the New World's morning; noon 
promise and prophesy, 

Spanning the reach of endeavor into the vast 
To Be: 

Broadening its stripes that their shadow shelter 
a mightier brood, 

A nation reckoned of nations, fearless of tem- 
per and mood. 

Never the past forgetting, to the hope of the 

past still true; 
But formed to a larger stature 'neath skies of a 

deeper blue; 
Grown to a fuller being; wise with the price of 

the years; 
The wisdom born of mistakes outwrought, the 

tenderness taught of tears; 
Strong with the pain of the purchase, tense 

muscle and sweat of brow, 



[115] 



When Destiny over the nation's heart drove 

deep its iron plow, 
Fit with the brawn of battle for guarding the 

ways of peace, 
That the factions of evil dwindle and the forces 

of right increase. 

Hemmed no more in the cradle by the marge of 

the Eastern Sea, 
No more for a home-hedged people the Stars of 

the West float free ; 
As the pine to its tall pride reaches, as the man 

to his power and prime. 
So the life of the nation broadens, strong-souled, 

to its riper time: 
With the might of a Titan impulse, a million 

hands at the wheel; 
A million minds far-serving, a million hearts 

to feel; 
Upborn as a ship sea-driven when the full tides 

sweep and roll. 
In the track of the gods fore-destined to the 

one unchanging goal. 

In the front of the great World-Shapers given 

to lead and mold. 
Lining the course of the New to plumb with the 

tried of the Old: 
On the broad foundation whose mortar was 

leavened with blood and tears, 

[116] 



Rounding the temple fore-tokened in dreams of 

prophets and seers ; 
Wide-domed as the vault of heaven; including 

as heaven includes ; 
Puny and strong alike, full-handed or bare of 

goods : 
Holding no caste in justice, no fief of air and 

light- 
Not flung as a bone to beggars but ceded a 

primal right. 

No more shall the Grail of the ages for the few 

be sought and won; 
But alike and alike the sharing when the strife 

is striven and done. 
Each man by the flag above him bound to his 

bravest and best ; 
To full, free chance for his making, to room for 

his highest quest ; 
Bound by the flag above him to reckon his 

brother's need; 
Bound by the flag above him to hearken and 

help and heed 
The voices crying in darkness, as the crying of 

kind and kin ; 
The call of the scourged and outcast, as the call 

of the housed within. 

Unfurl its folds to the winds of earth from 
every crest and crag; 

[117] 



Roll strong salute from a million throats to 
honor this greater flag; 

The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a 
wider trust ; 

From the Arctic snow-peaks waving to the sun- 
scourged desert dust; 

With the light of its starry halo out-tossed on 
the utmost seas, 

And its stripes in the sunshine rippling ca- 
ressed by the farthest breeze; 

With the hope of the hearts that won it our 
torch and beacon still. 

And the blood yet red for its keeping that 
flowed on Bunker Hill. 



[118] 



THE HYMN OF THE MEN THAT FAIL 

Lo, HERE we face the Weigher with our balance ; 

we, who out of all our toil have won 
Only hope fore-spent and ideals vanished; only 

scars and sweat beneath the sun ; 
All we dared, and spent our hearts in daring, 

grasping as a hand that grasps a star, 
Star-wise in its beauty and eluding lies beyond 

us still as dim and far. 

And the soul that panoplied for battle once rode 

bravely forth in Fortune's train; 
Wise now by futile march and foray, knows the 

high adventure was in vain: 
We have gained no laurels for our striving, 

naught of praise from them that sit to judge; 
Yet while there is room for new endeavor life is 

all too full for fret or grudge. 

We have failed — and bitter was the failing ; full 

the price we paid of faith and trust ; 
Still our souls turn backward unavailing to the 

Gods thrown prostrate in the dust: 
For we could not keep the sight of childhood; 

and the Grail our hearts set out to seek — 
It was but a vessel, empty, earthen — yet we 

had the joy of them that seek. 

All the winds of earth have blown us backward ; 
all her tides have turned our course awry ; 

[119] 



And though night be gemmed with starry splen- 
dor there is never lode star in our sky: 

Straight against the winds of Fate we venture ; 
in the teeth of every tide we steer; 

High above the darkness that enfolds us burns 
our guiding hope forever clear. 

We are them that fail; our hands are empty; 

hall and mart and temple know us not; 
Power is not to us, nor place uplifted; wit is 

not of us to plan and plot ; 
But the wide and lonely places know us ; hill 

and plain and wood and dark morrass ; 
And the light of homes and smoke of cities rise 

behind our footsteps as we pass. 

We have broke the way our brother followed; 

we have set the harvest to his hand; 
And the gold he heaps to fill his coffers we have 

winnowed out of barren sand : 
Earth yields her good to only stern compellers ; 

ours the knotted grip that bent her will; 
Bound her to the serving of our kindred — and 

her captive-hate is on us still. 

Homeless we have reared the homes of nations; 

mirthless we have laughed for others' mirth; 
Striven that another might have honor, as the 

stars appointed at our birth; 



[120] 



Ours the blood that reddened fields forgotten; 

ours the faith that sped a hope forlorn ; 
Ours the eyes that doomed to watch through 

darkness, see the first, far promises of morn. 

We are them that fail — O ye that reckon — hold- 
ing high our shortage to be weighed; 

Grant ye that no other bore our burden ; grant 
ye that the debt we made we paid: 

We have failed; but beaten and defeated, still 
we face whatever Life may send; 

Still we ask no odds of Fate or Fortune — we 
that go down fighting to the end. 



[121] 



THE LAST CAMP-FIRE 

ScAE not earth's breast that I may have 
Somewhere above her heart a grave ; 
Mine was a life whose swift desire 
Bent ever less to dust than fire ; 
Then through the swift, white path of flame 
Send back my soul to whence it came: 

From some great peak storm-challenging, 
My death-fire to the heavens fling; 
The rocks my altar, and above 
The still eyes of the stars I love ; 

No hymn, save as the midnight wind 
Comes whispering to seek his kind. 

Heap high the logs of spruce and pine, 

Balsam for spices and for wine; 

Brown cones, and knots a golden blur 

Of hoarded pitch more sweet than myrrh; 

Cedar to stream across the dark 

Its scented embers spark on spark; 

Long shaggy boughs of juniper. 
And silvery, odorous sheafs of fir; 

Spice wood to die in incense smoke 

Against the stubborn roots of oak — 
Red to the last for hate or love. 
As that red, stubborn heart above. 

Watch till the last pale ember dies. 
Till wan and low the dead pyre lies ; 

Then let the thin, white ashes blow 

[122] 



To all earth's winds, a finer snow; 

There is no wind of hers but I 

Have loved it as it whistled by ; 

No leaf whose life I would not share, 
No weed that is not someway fair: 

Hedge not my dust in one close urn. 

It is to these I would return — 

The wild, free winds, the things that know 
No master's rule, no ordered row. 

To be, if nature will, at length 

Part of some great tree's noble strength; 
Growth of the grass ; to live anew 
In many a wild flower's richer hue ; 

Find immortality indeed 

In ripened heart of fruit and seed. 

Time grants not any man redress 
Of his broad law, f orgetf ulness : — 

I parley not with shaft and stone, 

Content that in the perfume blown 

From next year's hillsides something sweet, 
And mine, shall make earth more complete. 



[123] 



THE GIVERS 

At the house of a soul once came knocking 
The first of a Hne of gift-bearers, 
Close-veiled and light-footed as silence, 
And speaking with voice soft and tender: 
" Lo, here is a season for growing," 
He said, then passed into the stillness. 
Leaving his room to a brother. 

And they that came after him softly 

Set down in the doorway their burdens. 

And whispered, " Make use of them swiftly, 

O soul, ere one cometh to reckon." 

But he, the proud soul, laughing lightly, 

Looked up where the sun was unrisen 

And said, " I will slumber till daybreak." 

So he turned on his pillow and, dreaming, 
Saw laurels inwoven to crown him; 
And wealth for his taking; and Beauty, 
With love in her eyes, run to meet him; 
Then he woke to a step in the doorway : 
" All night at thy feet lay thy wishes ; 
Now I take them," one said, and departed. 



[124] 



A CREED 

Let others frame their creeds ; mine is to work ; 

To do my best, however far it fall 

Below the keener craft of stronger hands : 

To be myself, full-hearted, free, and true 

To what my own soul sees, below, above ; 

To think my thought straight-forward from 

the heart; 
To feel, and be, and never stop to ask: 
" Do all men so? Is this the World's highway? " 
To look unflinching in the face of life 
As eagles look upon the noonday sun; 
To cut my own path through primeval woods; 
To lay my own course by the polar star 
Across the trackless plains and mountains vast; 
To seek, not follow, ever to the end. 
And for the rest — bare-handed have I come 
Into this world, I know not whence nor why ; 
Bare-handed and alone and unafraid. 
With heart of fire and eyes that question still, 
Will I go forth into the wide Beyond ; 
As went the men who bore my blood of old 
To prove their dream of Heaven, or dare their 

Hell. 



[125] 



QUITS 

Life made no easy truce with me, 

He set no white flag on my road; 

Unshod he thrust me to the trail 

And laughed the while he piled my load. 

Greeting, old master! Greeting, friend! 

I've made you friend; I've fought you fair; 

I've stumbled, fallen, scrambled up; 

Yet somehow borne the appointed share 

To this last station. Take the pack ; 

Sort, weigh it — lack or over-due, 

Still here's the load; the climb was mine. 

Scars, road-marks — all the rest to you. 

We're done; shake hands before we part. 

I rest here — feel the wind and rain 

Year-long blow past my rough, brown tent — 

Joy with you till we meet again ! 



[126] 



MEDUSA TO PERSEUS 

Perseus, draw near to me and fear me not ; 
Think'st thou I have not listened for thy step 
Through all the eons of my awful doom, 
As on the earth when light of Helios fades 
The young maid listens for her lover's step 
Crushing the daisies and the dewy grass? 
No lover's feet will ever come to me 
But thine are dearer; and the asphodel 
Thou bearest fairer than Love's fairest flowers. 

Draw near, and near, and nearer ; I would feel 
The end of this long waiting ; I would be 
For one quick moment all I might have been — 
Woman and tender ; drain at this one draught 
My woman's cup; tear-jeweled, brimmed with 

pain: 
Ay! By these tears I cheat thee. Mighty Maid, 
And by this pain — my heart is human still ! 
Thy curse fell impotent, that left me yet 
Bond-thrall to one dark prover of humanity. 

Dreams; old, old dreams that gather in the 
dusk; 

Death's dusk that soon will end them! How 
they press 

Upon me ! Voices that I loved but never knew ; 

Strong hands that clung across my black de- 
spair ; 



Eyes that were stars of many a night that else 
Had known no morning- Oh ! life, life, life, 

life! 
What hast thou given me — that would have 

made 
Thee rich with giving? Only bitter breath 
And tears ; loathing of them I would have loved ; 
And fear of them whose fears I would have 

borne. 
Truly thou wert a generous patron ! 
I thank thee — that thou favor me no more ! 

How wan those vapors rise from this sad place, 
As if they too would seek a brighter world; 
A world of heat and frost and night and sun ! 
So have I, sitting, watched them hour by hour; 
Seeing in each some hearth smoke newly lit. 
Some sweet, small home where happiness had 

room. 
How have I hungered in this silence for 
Earth's common sounds; the crying and the 

mirth ! 
Her poorest field I would have tilled with love; 
Her roughest path I would have walked with 

joy- 

These idle hands had worn them to the bone 
In common tasks and found the labor sweet; 
Served slave to slaves, could any serving buy 
Or beg, or bribe, the meanest human lot. 

[128] 



Alas ! in this dim cave they could but grope 
Each into each and, clasping, feign to hold 
The grasp of friend, the hand of love and kin : 
So out of moans my lips would form strange 

words ; 
All tender, crooning, soft and slow and hushed ; 
And warm, wet mouths in dreams have touched 

my breast. 
Seeking for food above the heart that breaks. 

But now the sleep — the end — the doom ful- 
filled! 
Hope, fear, despair — I bid ye long farewell — 
Here at this brink whereon your feet must turn 
Backward to haunt some other mortal soul : 
For I am free — am free — am free at last ! 
Wrapped round with death as with a royal robe ! 
Sisters, farewell! I would that ye might keep 
Some memory of the tortured human heart 
That vexed your silence with its agony. 
And loved while vexing. Perseus, the sword! 
Strike swift! I would be gone on what far way 
A soul must take to seek the Other World. 
Stay not for pleadings and petitionings ; 
I crave no gift the Gods can give but rest — 
Strike deep and strong and sure and set me free. 



[129] 



THE LONG QUEST 

"Has the longest prayer of man been answered to 
thee, Stranger, and hast thou thy friend?" 

— Amiel's Journal. 

Friend, I have found thee not ; I have not heard 
Thy voice, nor touched thy hand, nor seen thine 

eyes 
Grow clear with that great speech which needs 

not words: 
Yet do I seek thee — asking of the stars, 
Low-swung across this desert sky of mine, 
If anywhere they shine on one who goes 
Swift-footed to like end on kindred road. 

Yet do I seek thee — asking of the wind. 

Old Master-Singer, singing down the world, 

Mingling all music in his endless song. 

If he has caught some word, some tone, of thine 

To stir my silence like a trumpet call. 

I seek thee where the tall pines laugh and lean 

Against the sun, against the storm and cloud; 

For thou art strong like them and swift to joy; 

Strong to endure; deep-rooted into life; 

And glad of earth as of the blue above. 

I seek thee where the patient grasses go 
Across the hills ; their patience is as thine ; 
Thy quiet surety that Life's barrens yet 
Shall blossom; yet shall yield their fruit and 
seed; 

[130] 



Not less, nor less approved, measured at last. 
Than lavish harvests won by lighter toil. 
I seek thee where the wild floods whirl and swing 
Through riven canons, mad to reach the sea ; 
As some great soul that dares to know the all — 
The worst, the best, the farthest bound of life; 
Holding the pain and passion little price 
For one strong leap beyond the utmost verge. 
One mighty hail across the infinite. 

Friend, friend, I seek thee; holding that high 

quest 
Better than all earth's finding. Go thy way 
Swift and unhindered under thine own star; 
Along whatever way thy feet must take 
Past high and higher, on to higher yet ; 
On to the farthest peak thine eyes can see ; — 
I seek thee, seek thee ; call to thee " God speed ! " 
Go thou, nor wait — sure that somewhere I 

come. 



[131] 



A LITANY OF EVERY DAY 

Not that there be less to bear, 
Not that there be more to share; 
But for braver heart for bearing, 
But for freer heart for sharing, 
Here I pray. 

Not for scenes of richer beauty, 
Not for paths of Hghter duty ; 
But for clearer eyes for seeing. 
Gentler hands, more patient being, 
Every day. 

Not that joy and peace enfold me, 
Not that wealth and pleasure hold me; 
But that I may dry a tear. 
Speak a word of strength and cheer 
On the way. 

Not that I may sit apart. 
Housed from hurt of fling and smart ; 
But that in the press and throng 
I may keep a courage strong. 
Here I pray. 

Not that I at set of sun 
Measure deeds of greatness done; 
But that when my feet shall pass 
To my low tent in the grass 
One may say 

[132] 



" Speed thee well, O friend, who gave 
Freely all thy heart did crave; 
Love and truth and tenderness. 
Faith and trust and kindliness, 
In thy day." 



[133] 



WIND SONG 

One day upon the wings of air 

My soul shall get him forth; 
And nothing know I whence or where, 

To East or South or North; 
And little care I through what ways 

This soul of mine shall ride ; 
Or if the call be soon or late, 

At morn or eventide. 

But I would go when strong winds blow 

Full-throated down the heaven; 
And on the blast like pennants cast 

The wild, black hawks are driven: 
O kith and kin are they to me. 

Wild-winged my soul shall pass 
With them as their own shadows drive 

Across the wind-swept grass. 

Free winds that wander up and down 

The weary hills of earth ; 
What call like yours can sorrow drown, 

Or touch her seas to mirth! 
Strong winds that were tempestuous souls, 

O brothers, turn and wait; 
Take up my longing on your wings 

Till I shall master Fate. 

Take up my longing on your wings, 
O brothers, as ye go; 

[134] 



The dauntless soul within me sings 
That mighty hymn ye know; 

Kindred are we, though but for ye 
The boundless ways were made; 

Yet I would go my lesser road 
As strong and unafraid. 



[135] 



THE LOST THOUGHTS 

Guy de Maupassant, in his last days, believed his 
thoughts to be fluttering about his head like many-colored 
butterflies. " Where are my lost thoughts ? Who will 
tell me where to find my thoughts ? " he cried to those 
who tended him. 

See! Do you see that wondrous, winged cloud? 
As if all the garden flowers had taken flight 
Into the blue air for a holiday, 
And left their tall green stalks beteared with 

dew.'' 
They are butterflies now, but once I know 
They were my thoughts. I called them when I 

chose ; 
They came to me in gentle, circling troops 
Like fairies tamed by love, and poised upon 
My hands, and brushed my cheeks and lips with 

wings 
As soft as Psyche's kisses in the dark. 
There was a white one like an orient pearl 
Seen in the moonlight; pure and holy as 
The Virgin's white throat in the candle shine 
Of her high altar — or a young girl's soul. 
There was a girl — we two were boy and girl 
And play-mate lovers. I must have caught 
The white wings roughly, for they still are 

stained. 
I do forget — but Ah ! the silken-bright 
Red poppy flowers that are red butterflies! 
My thoughts, my thoughts, shot through with 

gleaming gold 

[ 136 ] 



And gemmed and jewelled like a Hindu queen, 
Amber and emerald, ruby and topaz. 
And charmful jade, and opal's mystic fire; 
And richer dyes than Tyre knew in her pride — 
(My own soul broken to a thousand hues 
As light upon a prism — the prism Life.) 
My winged thoughts ! My heavenly butterflies ! 
Now they are black, all black, with eyes of fire ; 
I smother in the sable of their wings 
That wrap around me like a velvet pall — 
I cannot see the sun for their deep eyes — 
Be merciful ! My butterflies ! O my lost 
thoughts ! 



[137] 



THE STRANGER 

Art stranger, Love? because no lover's hand 

Hath clasped my own with pressure strong 
and sweet? 
Because my ears heed not those tender tales 

That hearts in tune with Spring and thee 
repeat ? 
Nay, rather walk we closer, soul to soul, 

Great Love and I ; I love thee all too much 
To jar thy music with a lesser tone. 

Or mar thy radiance with a duller touch. 

I hold me to thy uses consecrate. 

As some white temple set beside the sea; 
With close-shut door no foot may enter in 

Till fair tides bring its own divinity: 
Here are no withered flowers against the shrine; 

No dusty highways through the beaten grass 
Where all men go; only the birds and thee, 

The salt winds and the sun, unstayed may 
pass. 



[138] 



DAY'S END 

Swiftly at set of sun, 

The long day being done, 

I seek my love; 

Her whom my heart doth hold 

Dearer than gems and gold 

Or treasure trove. 

Still are her eyes and cool 
As some clear mountain pool 
Fern-hid and lone. 
Some reed-edged pool that lies 
Blue under star-lit skies, 
The wild-fowl flown ; 

The ousel's fluting note 
Hushed in his dappled throat, 
The night wind still — 
And over all the peace 
Which is my soul's release 
From life sore-spent and days that reckon 
ill. 



[139] 



THE FIRST FIRE ON THE HEARTH 

Clean as a new-built altar to the Gods 

The new hearth stands ; 
No tears have stained, no prayers have hallowed 
it; 

Make clean thy hands 
As some High Priest who tends the holy flame 

Life-long in temples old; 
Bring not to kindle this divine first fire 

Wood that is bought and sold 
In common marts ; but such as symbols clear 

The life that thou shalt make, 
Here under this new roof, by this new hearth, 

For Great Love's sake. 

Bring heart of pine to point thee to the stars; 

Higher and yet more high 
Thy thought on its green pinions shall ascend — 

Yet keep thee ever nigh 
Tender and kind to every earth-born need; 

As low-spread cedar boughs 
Give grateful shade, or laid upon the fire 

Shed fragrance through the house. 
Here let the oak outspend his noble strength 

In flame that shall endure 
Beyond the last red coal to thy life's end 

In strength as great and sure. 

Lay here red sandal and dark orient teak, 
That their rich wood may turn 

[140] 



To star-crowned dreams and visions in the flame 

Wherein their kindred bum; 
And mystic, harp-stringed branches of the 
pakn — 

Prophet and seer of trees — 
Speeding thy life through all that can beset 

To noblest destinies: 
Bring these, as men bring votive offerings. 

And let rare spices fall 
Into the unswept flame. High, higher yet. 

Thy life at Love's great call! 



Li«] 



A TRUCE WITH DEAD SOULS 

Now loose me, loose me, O ye dead 
Whose shadowy fingers clasp my own ; 
I must fare on my way alone. 
Along a road ye may not tread. 
To hopes and fears ye have not known. 

Nor shall ye challenge my high truth. 
Nor deem of me that I forget 
That far goal where our eyes were set ; 
Nor hold me false to that lost youth 
Whose solemn visions lead me yet. 

Ye quiet, ye untroubled dead. 
Count ye the stones that stay my feet? 
Or reckon ye the winds that beat 
Fiercely upon my naked head.^^ 
Weigh ye the fear my soul must meet.? 

O loose me, for I journey far; 

hold me not ; ye cannot know 

On what rough trails my feet must go 
In lands unlit of sun and star, 
Where still the swiftest feet are slow. 

1 see what ye no more may see ; 
I seek our vision's noblest use; 
And he that keeps that quest with me 
Through good and ill all patiently 

Is Life. Ah ! dead souls, grant the truce ! 

[142] 



A FRIEND 

I CHOOSE no friend as one may choose a glove, 

To use, hold in his hand, and cast aside 

When it is old; forgetting that awhile 

It served his purpose — neither more nor less 

Than others of its kind have served, and will: 

Nor as we in a grave or idle hour 

Take up a book and say : " This shall beguile 

My listlessness, or teach what I would know ; " 

Then leave its crumpled pages on a shelf 

And go about the various ways of life. 

More would I take my friend as one who finds 
A cool spring in the desert, where his cup, 
Filled to the brim, leaves gratitude behind ; 
And though he wander far knows if at last 
His feet turn back along that self -same road 
The same good welcome waits him at the end: 
Or as those faces we behold in dreams ; 
Haunting us, waking, with their strange, deep 

eyes 
That sting the soul into a thousand needs 
Finer and freer than it knew before. 

He is my friend who tempts me ever on 
To high and higher; standing yet above 
With hand reached back, as one who knows the 

path 
Has stones a-many for the surest feet; 

[143] 



Who weighs my weakness fairly with my 

strength 
And sets a better higher than my best; 
Bidding me work when others say "Well done !" 

My friend is he who gives me larger faith 
In men and life and hope of final good ; 
Who by the alchemy of his fine breadth 
Transmutes my doubt and pain and weariness 
Into peace and the pure gold of patience. 
The wind and stars, those old, old friends of 

mine. 
Are symbols of the human souls I love ; 
Free as the wind is, high and pure and clear 
As shine the stars — so would I have my friend. 



[144] 



MAGDALEN 

Do YOU remember, love, the thing I was 
That summer morning when you stood with me 
There in the rain- wet fields, where the sweet wind 
Blew my hair loose and free? 

Do you remember? Ay! My soul was clean 
As that clean wind that blew between us two; 
My spirit burned as some white temple flame 
When the god passes through. 

You were my god — and all of earth fell back ; 
I saw but you — knew only you were near ; 
Look in my eyes — What is it there today 
That strikes you cold with fear? 

You stooped that day to touch your cheek to 

mine — 
I laugh to watch you shrink and shudder now ; 
Am I so changed? Look well — it is your mark 
That brands me, cheek and brow. 

Ay ! and my hand-print lies upon your soul ! 
You cannot loose my fingers from your own ; 
And though your feet go up to palaces, 
Or down to Hell they do not go alone. 



[145] 



THE EARTH MADONNA 

Beloved, see, within my close-curved arm 

He lies, jour child. Oh! keep us well from 

harm! 
Love him, by all our tender love and true — 
As I through him find deeper love for you. 

All our great hopes and dreams and dear desires 
Lie in this small shut hand; our purest fires 
Bum here in this new life — your soul and mine 
Fused to new shape immortal and divine. 

And yet — if in this holy hour and dear 
Great Death came down and stood beside me 

here, 
And said " One must I take with me tonight, 

but keep 
That one for which your heart would longest 

weep 

Tears of heart's blood, Beloved, I could 

smile 
And lift the child to meet his kiss the while. 
So you were left. For he, so dear, so dear. 
Is but my child — But you, my Life, stay near ! 



[146] 



LOVE'S WISDOM 

Woulds't thou be loved? Then set thy love so 

high 
No man may win it, though he stand upon 
The utmost peaks with face against the stars. 
Aloof ! Nor bend thee once to eyes that burn, 
And lips that plead, and hands that clasp and 

cling : 
The jewel that within the temple glowed 
A soul's fit forfeit, as a bit of glass 
Cast with the pot-shreds lies when it is won. 

Who minds him of the flower that undenied 
He plucked and kissed? Or for an hour forgets 
The rose that slipped his grasp and left a thorn 
Deep in his hands to mock their daring quest.? 
And who hath loved the broad plains, lavish- 

souled 
Of all rich gifts that make life dear and good, 
As men have loved the mountains that afar 
Beckon in untrod grandeur, and deny? 

Still is the vision dearer than the real, 

The dreaming sweeter than the dream fulfilled; 

For men love most the unattainable ; 

Leaving the hearth-light, warm and near and 

kind. 
To follow pale auroras through the night, 
With beggared souls that to the winds have 

flung 
Their rarest gifts in hopeless bribery. 

[147] 



Woulds't thou be loved? Then hold thyself 

apart, — 
Nor yield to any, though he drain his life 
To flood thine own ; for if thou give again 
Such barter in its usage carries scorn 
Of too free giving : — so thy love were lost. 
And thou uncrowned, that else had reigned a 

queen. 
Heaven's self were transient lure, were it not 

set 
Too high for careless winning, over earth. 



[148] 



THE GIFTS 

There were three gifts at eventide the West 

Wind brought to me, 
That I might choose for joy or use my fate 

from out the three: 
" Now here is gold," the West Wind saith, " and 

fair it is to see; 
Who chooseth gold hath power to hold; men 

serve him loyally." 

" A prince he is," the West Wind saith ; " I 

know the hidden mine; 
Shalt lead thee now o'er fire and snow to 

where the ingots shine ? " 
Nay then, who hath the yellow gold hath 

trouble at his back; 
Whose needs are few, whose heart is true, 

what knoweth he of lack? 

" But here is Love," the West Wind saith, " the 

light of life is he; 
Wilt bid him now to bind thy brow with 

myrtle greenery ? 
He sets the pace that young feet dance, and 

leads with lute and bow; 
Take thou his hand and through the land 

with him till curfew go." 

Nay then, for he who seeketh Love finds but 
an empty nest; 

[149] 



Love Cometh still of his own will, unsought, 

and that is best. 
Then one spake up full loud and clear : " Now 

I am Work," said he; 
" And they that hold not love nor gold have 

need of mine and me." 

"Wilt follow, follow, where I lead?" his voice 

rang free and strong; 
" Here's hope and cheer for all the year ; here's 

balm for every wrong." 
Yea, I will turn and follow thee ; thou speak- 

est like a king ; — 
" Then shalt thou see if true thou be, the other 

gifts I bri/ng.** 



[150] 



LIFE IS A DAY 

"Life is as a day that hath its morn of hope, its noon 
of strength, its night of peace, whose morrow no man 
knoweth." 

MORNING 

Young Heart, Spring Heart, 
Waken with the morning; 
Sing for the long road 
That Heth white before; 
Lieth there untrodden 
With little flowers adorning. 
And green hills of promise 
Thy fathers saw of yore. 

Young Heart, Spring Heart, 
Wine of Life is flowing; 
Stoop thee to the beaker 
And drain it at a draught ; 
Gird thee for the journey, 
Joy is in the going. 
And hope is in the heart of him 
Who wine of Life hath quaff^ed. 

NOON 

Strong Heart, Bold Heart, 
Brace thee for the battle ; 
Wait now the onset 
Exultant and calm ; 
Love lilt and war cry. 
Babies' soft prattle, 

[151] 



Mingle and meet 

In thy life's swelling psalm. 

Dreaming is over, 

The old gods are buried; 

Joy was a phantom 

Ye chased through the mist; 

Broken the shrines where 

Thy young feet have tarried; 

Dust are the lips that 

Thy young lips have kissed. 

NIGHT 

Old Heart, Still Heart, 
Lying in the shadow; 
Lying there all silent 
With the glory on thy face ; 
Feet that have trodden 
The upland and meadow 
Spring nevermore 
To the heat of the race. 

Old Heart, Still Heart, 

Life is a striving; 

Of all that it promises 

Work is the best ; 

Love is a fable. 

And wealth is but giving — 

Kind is the evening 

That leadeth to rest. 

[152] 



THE COMPACT 

"Body, praj thee, let me go! 

It is the soul that struggles so." 

Danske Dandridge. 

O Life, let us make compact here, as men who 

set a bond between them ; 
We have been comrades, journeying all roads 

together, near and far. 
And rough and smooth ; all the winds that blow 

hail us as brothers. 
And the stars of every land speak us in common 

tongue as kin: 
Right gladly have we dared all chance and 

found it good — if won or lost ; 
But there must come a day when thou and I 

loose hands, divide the pack, 
And fare us each alone on widening trails that 

nevermore shall meet. 
Friend, when we know that hour face to face; 

in hall or tent, on road or waste or plain ; 
Or, as I pray, where some great, silent peak 

fronts solemn, fearless, to eternity ; 
Say thou " Godspeed ! " and lift the stirrup cup 

right gaily to the lips that cry "Farewell !" 
Grip thou my hand, as one who sees his long- 
tried friend go forth 
On some great quest he would, but may not, 

share — where danger jostles honor on the 

road. 



[158] 



When that stern call no mortal may gainsay 

rings in my ears, 
Do thou make generous haste; nor grudge my 

going, nor cling doggedly 
Till flesh and soul are riven with mighty pain, 

or worn with slow decay ; 
But as thou love me, as I have been true to 

thee and to thy service. 
Give me swift release, and lift our love up as a 

lifted torch to light my going. 
I have no quarrel that we two must part ; nor 

fear of that still, wondrous mystery 
Beyond the parting: but spare thou my human 

weakness ; I would go out undismayed ; 
Unshrinking; shadowed with no vain regret for 

done or undone ; — 
As we could we wrought ; let who comes after 

better us in deed, but not in will: 
Now Hope, and Courage, and my comrade Life, 

shoulder to shoulder for the final stand! 
Till from beyond those farthest heights of all 

my cheer rings down to meet your parting 

cheer, 
As some path seeker on untrodden peaks shouts 

backward to his fellows and goes on. 



[154] 



COMPANIONED 

At daybreak when the sunrise lay 

Along the desert sand, 
I buckled girth and tightened rein, 

And rode to win the land; 
I rode as rides a careless youth 

Who fears no evil tide ; 
But from the dark a phantom stark 

Pressed out to gain my side. 

Gray-cowled and still he nearer drew, 

The morning air grew chill; 
The wind wailed low the while I turned 

And bade him name his will : 
" My will it is to ride with thee, 

Whatever chance betide ; 
For good or ill to follow still, 

More close than friend or bride." 

My heart turned cold, my arm grew weak; 

I struck a stinging spur 
And strove at maddest pace to lose 

That ghostly follower. 
We reeled upon the desert's verge, 

My hard-pressed steed and I, — 
And full beside through. that wild ride 

The wraith smiled silently. 

He clasped my hand, he touched my brow 
With lips that froze and burned; 

[155] 



" Now art thou mine to have and hold 
Till all the tale be learned. 

Put by the whip and ringing spur; 
Put by the brave array ; 

For thou with me shall presently 
Go forth in hodden gray. 

** I lay my chrism upon thine eyes 

That thy bhnd soul may see 
The grandeur rife in human life, 

Its joy and misery." — 
So fare we softly side by side, 

Nor ever turn again; 
And now I hail the presence " Friend," 

Who once had called him " Pain." 



[156] 



ALONE 

Oh! arms that ache with weary emptiness, 
Yet knew Love's fullness ere your day was old, 
How shall I turn with comforting to you 
Who have the burden's tender memory still? 
Hands that but clasp each other, wet with tears 
Yet tingling with the pressure of a touch 
Scarce now withdrawn, I give you no regret — 
Whose " has been " gladdens all the long " to 

be." 
What know you, though you grieve, of loneli- 
ness, 
Who count the days back sure of smiles that 

were. 
And eyes that looked and loved and understood? 
Empty the arms, companioned still the soul — 
For souls once met blend all futurity 
Into that meeting- 

But one I knew whose empty heart had ne'er 
Beat faster to the sound of kindred step ; 
Whose hand no other hand had reached to grasp 
In brotherhood of purpose ; in whose ear 
No voice spoke greeting in a mother tongue: 
A soul that from the Chaos back of Time 
Passed out alone, and through the Then and 

Now 
Walked ahen past the homes of happy men. 
E'en stars bend to each other through the blue, 
And earth calls upward to her sister spheres ; 
But seeking, seeking, still in ceaseless quest, 
This soul went outward to Eternity. 

[157] 



THE INHERITOR 

Look you, ye line of men and women reaching 

back 
Behind my shoulders into Life's lost dawn — 
Ye square- jawed, low-browcd, fierce-eyed fight- 
ing-man ; 
Ye fawning slave, cringing before the whip ; 
Ye strong-souled prophet of diviner things ; 
Ye praying saint, ye sensuous, sin-steeped fool; 
Ye seer, love driven, paying drop by drop 
Thy own blood down to buy thy brother's need ; 
Ye sleek and shifty plotter, cunning-lipped 
Ye pale ascetic, ye the loose-tongued bawd; 
Ye weak, and tender, loving, scorning, mad 
With glutted pride — abased in misery ; 
Ye that have measured all the pendulum 
Of human passion, chance, and hope, and 

pain — 
I bid ye halt; I am the crucible. 
My will the furnace fire ; fused here in me 
Your motley ore shall take what shape I choose, 
To serve what end I order and command. 

I'll make of ye my weapon and my tool. 

My sword and plowshare. Ye shall hold or 

break, 
Strike or be idle, at my word. In my hand 
Ye shall be gathered as a missile fit 
And hurled subservient to seek my goal. 
Look in my eyes and know I fear ye not; 

[158] 



Because ye were I am — and rule ye now. 
I will not go your road nor seek your end; 
I will not pray your prayer nor sing your song ; 
Ye shall not sear me with the sullen heat 
Of your spent passions. My lips shall never 

writhe 
With bitter pleading for your old desires. 
Ye shall not shake my soul with your lost fears, 
Nor grip my heart with dead regret and pain. 

I am your master ; if ye live again 
Ye take life from my hand at my own terms. 
I will bind up the fire that flared in you 
To use diverse, and make of it a torch 
Clear-flamed and strong to light the road I 

choose. 
Your wrongs shall set me free from kindred 

wrong ; 
Your labor and your loss shall be the steps 
Beneath my feet on which I stand to rise. 
Your hopes undone shall wing my hope for 

flight; 
I will take up the broken dreams that fell 
From your spent grasp and weld them into 

one — 
A deathless vision of futurity. 

O ye dead hearts that ached; dead hands that 

clinched 
In fear or fury ; dead lips that lied or loved ; 

[159] 



Dead souls that grovelled or aspired as ye 

could — 
Ye rule me not — I am the master here. 
For my swift hour ye serve me as I will — 
Till from forgotten dust I serve the men that 

come. 



[160] 



ON MY OWN PORTRAIT 

And yet — the face shall pass 
As a shadow 'cross the grass ; 
As the shadow of a bird- wing 
Spread a moment in the sun ; 
As the light-blown dust that dances 
In the wind and whirls and glances 
Mote-wise in a passing sunbeam, 
When the Sand of Fate is run. 
Out of silence — here and hither ; 
Into silence — whence and whither 
Still unanswered; still unmapped 
The road the feet have come and gone. 
Heart of fire, soul aspiring; 
Spirit daring, strong, untiring — 
Is the unmapped Road to Silence 
All that ye and Life have won? 
Ah ! but there was still the fight ! 
Darkness — and the search for light ! 
Road unmapped — but fearless going 
Out upon the journey — knowing 
Naught and daring all. 
As ye will then, weigh and measure; 
Count the gain and hoard the treasure 
But the Fight was more than all. 



[161] 



« 



THE IMMORTAL 

King and priest and poet met 
In a garden, arbor set, 
On a green hill by the sea 
Where the waves lapped tenderly, 
Crooning to the restless sands 
Lullabies of distant lands. 
From the stately palace near 
Rippling music smote the ear, 
Mingled with the solemn bell 
Of the monks that matins tell 
'Neath the censer swinging slow 
In the ancient church below. 
Dawn, with rosy fingertips 
Reached to Day, her lingering lips 
Pressed upon the dead Night's brow ; 
As we mortals, too, somehow, 
Turn us in the past to grope 
Ere we grasp the hand of Hope. 

Spake the king, as wistfully 
He looked out across the sea 
Sparkling in the growing light: 
Ah! the morning-promise bright! 
Bright as life, whose morning glow 
Shadows but to dusk we know! 
Is it then a little striving, 
Ending at the last in nothing? 
Lieth there a fairer day 
Past Death's night, O poet, say.'* 

[162] 



Priest, what sajeth your heart's need, 
Standing clear of myth and creed? 

Said the priest : " Man is the flower 

Of creation's natal hour; 

He earth's lord — and yet earth's sorrow 

Presseth him, till he must borrow 

Joy from some half -guessed tomorrow — ■ 

If his making be not jest; 

Or a mockery, at best. 

You who rule and I who pray. 

Shut from common strife away. 

Still find in our life's brief cup 

Tears and wormwood welling up ; 

Vain would our existence be 

Without immortality." 

Lightly then the poet laughed 
As the ruddy wine he quaffed: 
" What is immortality 
To the butterfly or bee.'' 
Yet life's sweetest sweets are theirs. 
Summer suns and summer airs ; 
Skyward still the brown larks climb 
And the ring doves in the lime 
Wake the roses with their cooing. 
Silence into sweetness wooing; 
And the grass is glad in growing 
For the white flocks hillward going. 



[163] 



" E'en with gifts of sorrow's giving 
There is joy enough in Uving; 
Heart-kept joys in every day 
No ill chance can take away. 
Truth and beauty are immortal, 
And if we tomorrow's portal 
Should not pass, yet men may say 

" He lived kindly yesterday ; 
Sought no evil, thought no ill; 
So we keep his memory still, 
As a lamp our feet to guide 
Till the ebbing of the tide 
Calls us seaward in the dark." 
Look you, brothers, if a spark 
Of eternal fire be caught 
In these bodies weakly wrought, 
Let it flame to noble deeds 
For our present, human needs — 
So from life itself may we 
Build our immortality." 



[164] 



THE BEDESMAN OF THE YEAR 

Stands Time, the gray old bedesman, 

And loosely through his hold 
Slip down the daj^s like carven beads, 

Silver and dusk and gold. 

And each day hath its whispered prayer, 

Each one its patron saint ; 
And each its tender memories 

Like incense sweet and faint. 

O gray old bedesman, when you've told 

Life's rosary all through, 
Leave us the old life's memory 

To consecrate the new. 



[165] 



THE LONG MARCH 

REVEILLE 

Ho, COMRADES, Oil the mountain top the sun 
has touched the trees, 
Strike camp and march, the ringing bugles 
call; 
Swing lightly to the saddle with the rifle held 
at ease, — 
We may need it, we who ride to win or fall. 
What is living but a battle? What is dying but 
a rest? 
If there's time to snatch a laurel ere we go, 
And to leave one hot kiss printed on the lips 
we love the best 
We have garnered all the fullest life can 
know. 

With our faces toward the morning, with her 
music in our hearts. 
And the sunrise on our banners bright with 
hope, 
Lo, our line of march is upward where the 
snowy summit starts, 
Press forward for the rough, untrodden 
slope. 
Through the pines the wind is laughing and the 
tall trees sway and swing 
Like the swaying crowds that cheer us as we 
ride ; 

[166] 



And our bugles wake the echoes till the far 
peaks shout and sing — 
Ah! but life is youth and love and battle- 
pride. 

THE CAMP 

Halt, comrades, here the sun of noon falls 
straight upon the grass, 
And the droning locust drowns the bugle call ; 
In the valley there below us see the harvesters 
that pass 
Where the gold of ripened grain is over all. 
Like a flag of truce the home-smoke waving in 
the summer wind 
Calls the workers from the field for rest and 
cheer — 
When the battle din is over and the glory all 
behind 
It were good to find such welcome kind and 
near. 

Who has clasped the hand of woman in the hour 
when life was hard, 
Who has loved a little child and called him 
son; 
Who has set himself with broken arms the home- 
land road to guard, 
Yearns for friendly board and hearth when 
all is done. 



[167] 



Coin of peace is price of battle, glory but a 
rainbow set 
In the clearing sky for sign of hope to come ; 
As the road winds down the valley all the rest 
we may forget, 
Knowing life is work and love and joy of 
home. 

THE BIVOUAC 

Look, comrades, through the bending trees a 
gleam of silver light, 
Where the winding river goes to find the sea ; 
OfF-saddle, — here we bivouac the long appointed 
night. 
Till the Great Commander sounds reveille. 
All along the trail behind us in the grasses and 
the pines 
Lie the brothers who were weary e're the 
night ; 
And we shoulder close together now to hide the 
thinning lines. 
And there's more than mist of years to dim 
our sight. 

Old ambitions burned to ashes sift their white- 
ness through the hair 
Of the gayest youth who faced the morning 
sun; 
And it's more of scars than honors that the 
bravest comrades wear, 
As we count the cost and know the fight is 
done. 

[168] 



Guidons flutter in the night wind and the camp- 
fires flicker low, 
We are silent with old memories deep and 

fond; 
Up, comrades, cheer the joy of life once more 

before we go — 
Knowing now 'tis love and service and a 
mighty hope Beyond. 



[169] 



THE RACE MOTHER 

At sunrise I saw her, the woman eternal, the 

Race Mother; 
She stood upon a great, gray difF — and behind 

her the forest; 
The dawn was on her face; over the world she 

looked as one seeking — 
As one whose eyes have watched long through 

shadow. 
And are weary still watching for one who comes 

not. 
Her mate she sought — waiting there with the 

forest behind her, 
And the world stretching wide, and the wind 

singing glory to daybreak. 
Strong and pure and clean-limbed and deep- 
bosomed — 
Goddess and woman in one — loving and longing 

she waited. 
Out from the foot of the cliff one crept up to 

take her; 
Huge-muscled, careless — o'er-borne with fierce 

cravings and hunger. 
He saw not her eyes with the passionate longing 

within them — 
Burning holy and tender with infinite love and 

compassion. 
Only the strong, sweet body he grasped — 

crushed and maimed — bound to serve him; 

[170] 



Bent at his will, and distorted — till ugly and 
broken, 

Unmeet even to serve, it shambled beside him. 

On the breast hung a child, half -divine, half- 
monstrous — 

Maimed too, scarred, deformed — mingling 
strangely 

The holy dawn-dream in the deep, waiting eyes 
of the woman. 

And the careless, fierce face of the man as he 
fought up to take her. 



It was night now, and the dawn-light was dead, 
and the wide world was hidden. 

And the wind whimpered and wailed like a crea- 
ture that suffers and hopes not. 



[171] 



ROAD'S END. 

The old wife by the grave-stone stands 

And looketh far away ; 
Her eyes are deep as pools of rain 

Twilit at close of day. 
" God rest ye, husband of my flesh — 

Life-Stranger to my soul — 
I pray thy spirit goes to seek 

Some dear-desired goal." 

" How long, how long, the way chance willed, 

We journeyed side by side. 
Yet never met at stile or gate — 

I was thy body's bride! 
That far-off day, our wedding day, 

I dreamed as women will — 
The heart a-hungered and alone 

Is lone and hungered still." 

" Four hands won roof and goods and gear 

And ploughed and gleaned and spun — 
Two stranger hearts the world apart 

Sat down when toil was done. 
God rest ye now beyond the end ; 

God light the way ahead — 
And that the living eyes were blind. 

Lay sight upon the dead." 



[172] 



THE CHOOSING 

" Here is life," I said to my heart ; 
" Shall thou and I take part 
In his battle and busy mart? 
Shall we follow the voices that call 
From temple and workshop and hall: 
' Lo, brother, we bid thee come ?' " 

** There is pleasure in palace and bower ; 

There is gold for our winning, and power; 
And fame — for an idle hour 
A bauble to tempt the best. 

Shall we make us one with the rest, 
And attempt, and achieve — or fail?" 

But my heart, grown sudden wise, 

Looked out from steadfast eyes 

And said : " In myself it lies 
To be more than a tool for gain — 

Nay, Life, ye must bid again 

Ere I answer to your call." 

" What say you of honor, O Life ? 
Has it room in the bitter strife 
With which your service is rife? 
Is there room for a soul to be 
All the best it can feel and see ; 
To unfold its wings and arise?" 



[173] 



Then Life, with sphinx-like face, 
And smile wherein no trace 
Of answering had place; 

Said : " Take my gift, or leave it- 
But know they that receive it 
Can make it what they will." 



[174] 



WINE OF DREAMS 

With wine of dream-land fill the cup 

And pledge the past, my soul, with me; 
Drink deep, old friend, and summons up 

The ghost of all the Used-To-Be. 
Here's to the joys we knew erstwhile; 

Look how they troop, a motley crew! 
Here's to the laugh, the jest, the smile. 

That cheered our way when life was new. 

Comrades, good cheer! Good luck be yours! 

Long may you follow on our track; 
Until we pass to farther shores — 

Then to our place here turn you back 
And laugh with those we leave behind; 

Ring merry music in their ears ; 
Crack joke with joke in merry kind, 

Till they shall give no place to tears." 

We crave no grief, my soul and I; 

Each life enough of sorrow knows ; 
Let none mourn darkly when we lie 

In silence under rue and rose. 
And you, gray wraith in cowl and gown, 

Who " Closer than a brother " pressed ; 
Here on this last couch lay you down — 

Together neath Death's touch we rest. 

For you were fashioned of our tears ; 
You were the shadow which Life's real, 

[175] 



With broken hopes and bitter fears, 
Cast o'er our shining, high ideal. 

Your power is done — hide in the dust 
Of that wild heart which gave you birth 

But all our joys we leave in trust 
To cheer some toiling child of earth. 



[176] 



MY GARDEN 

My heart is a little garden 

Set in a desert waste; 

The walls are rough, the door is small, 

And high the key is placed. 

None guess my hidden riches, 
My wealth of leaf and bloom ; 
The gold of chaliced lilies, 
The roses rare perfume. 

Here climbs the starry jasmine, 

Hope's ladder to the skies; 

And here like thoughts too pure for words 

The silken moonflowers rise. 

Here falls the plashing fountain 
With Fancy's waters bright; 
Here flit Ambition's butterflies. 
Winged jewels in the light. 

And all sweet birds are singing 
Their happy songs together; 
So brings the year whatever cheer 
My heart holds summer weather. 



[177] 



SUMMER APPLES 

Apples of Hesperides, 
Jugglers' golden balls are these; 
Look within them and you'll see 
Many a magic mystery: 
Winter snows are prisoned here; 
April showers, May sunshine clear; 
All the witcher}^ of June, 
Rose's red and robin's tune; 
Wrought by Nature's alchemy 
Into sweet reality. 



[178] 



HER FINGER FATE 

'' A friend, a foe, a true love, a beau, a journey 

to go." 

The old superstition of naming the spots on the finger- 
nails still survives in country places, where some old 
lady may say gravely: "You have an enemy; look at the 
spots on your finger nails," and young girls count them 
for friend or lover. "I knew he would be a wanderer, 
said one woman of an absent son, "there was always a 
journey on both his hands." 

Softly she whispered it over, 

Knee deep in the scented grass, 
Where I and the first wild roses 

Lingered to watch her pass. 
She kissed her hand to the swallows 

Skimming the pond below. 
And turned with a face all archness 

As she chanted 'Friend or foe.?' 

" See, here is my life before me. 

All that I keep or fail ;" 
And she counted the spots that glistened 

On each rose-leaf finger nail; 
Like baby pearls in the sunshine. 

Or wind-rocked, cloudy flecks ; 
The little white dots that dappled 

Her nails with snowy specks. 

" A friend — ^but look, how many ! 

A foe — " Not one, I said; 
" A true love " — Sweet, he is near you — 

She blushed as the roses red. 

[179] 



He is waiting, dear, to claim you ; 

Your truest love and beau — 
Ah! why did my eyes turn misty 

As she murmured " A journey to go " ? 

The roses bloom in the meadow 

As they bloomed that other day, 
And I and the spring and the swallows 

Wander the old sweet way; 
We call but we cannot wake her. 

So still in the vale below; 
And my heart and the blossoms whisper, 

" A journey, a journey to go." 



[180] 



DUMB IN JUNE 

Written on the fly leaf of Richard Burton's volume of 
verse, "Dumb in June." 

June that floods the earth with sweetness, 
Songs and scents and petals bright; 
How my heart in your completeness 
Loses self with full delight! 
Think you if with no lip-greeting 
I give welcome warmly told, 
That my spirit to this meeting 
Springs not as in time of old? 

Dearer comer than when child-heart 
Sang to greet you from the hill; 
Dearer to the captive wild-heart 
Where the music now is still. 
Should I sing when you are singing 
Through my soul's most shadowed ways, 
Jubilant with promise, ringing 
Down the drone of common days? 

June-time! Spring-time! Hour of growing! 
Time with all renewing blest! 
Throbbing from a heart o'er-flowing, 
Silent songs may praise you best. 



[181] 



MEMORIAM 

In memory of our dead! The dead that lie 
Near, love-guarded graves, where still our 

tenderness 
Can reach out like a hand across the dark 
To touch the still hands folded close in rest. 
The near, loved dead that were our own; 
That walked with us the busy common ways, 
And made life dear, and homely duties sweet. 
In memory of our dead ! In memory of the 

memories that go 
Forever with us, till we, too, shall lie 
With still, white faces turned to meet the stars. 

In memory, in hope, in tenderness ! 

Rest ye, O well-beloved, remembered dead! 

Peace with you ! Ye that do but keep 

The bivouac till we come. 

Ye that but wait us till the march is done; 

Arms stacked; and guidons fluttering 

Above the camp of our eternal rest. 

In memory ! In memory of the far, forgotten 

dead. 
That lie unheeded in the common dust. 
In memory of the daring hearts that sleep 
In unmarked graves beside forgotten trails; 
The men who set their faces to the West, 
And blazed the way for empires yet to come — 
Winning at last a width of nameless sod. 

[182] 



In memory ! Wherever one brave soul goes out 
Strong-hearted on that last, lone road all men 

must take, 
He, too, is comrade, and his courage is 
A bugle call that rings " Advance, nor fear !" 
To every hard-pressed soul upon the way. 
Wherever one spent toiler for the common good 
Lets fall his tools from weary, calloused hands, 
His work is ours, — a trust to further to the 

fullest end. 

No hope that ever warmed a human heart 
Was lost when that heart crumbled into dust: 
The dreams that woke the sunrise of the world 

are ours — 
Our dead walk with us daily, hand in hand. 
But every joy we know to give or keep; 
By hearts more gentle, and by eyes more true, 
They are our own, and undivided still. 

In memory ! In memory of the dead ! 

In tenderness and hope for all who live ! 

Peace with you, ye that lie at rest! 

Hope with you, ye that live and yet must face 

The pain of living! 

In memory, in hope, in tenderness ! 



[183] 



AS A LITTLE SHADOW ON THE GRASS 

How all alone we are, despite our striving 

For sympathy and love! 
How all alone we are in this our living, 

With silent skies above! 

These stars of ours have shone on Alexander; 

Their tender light was old 
What time the Roman hills knew lost Evander; 

The night winds sweet and cold 

Have lingered in the dusk with Omar's roses ; 

They keep the fragrance yet ! 
And all the rare, green earth that round us 
closes 

Whispers a vague regret. 

It is not ours ; we are not its first lovers ; 

We do but journey here 
Where every little springing grass blade covers 

Some heart once held as dear. 

We yearn to touch them, stretch our hands in 
greeting; 
To make them all our own. 
Mist wraiths and dreams ! they vanish at the 
meeting 
And we pass on alone. 



[184] 



DAWN 

Once the Dawn among the trees whispered 

me such words as these: 
" There was stillness in the valley, there was 

darkness on the hill, 
Till my spirit came among them, borne upon 

a minion breeze, 
Woke them into light and music and dispelled 

them with my will. 

" Where my fingers touched the tresses of the 

clouds with swift caresses. 
Burned a splendor like the jewels set to bind 

a princess' hair; 
Softly from my garment shaken fell the 

gentle dew that blesses 
Every sweet and stately blossom meet to 

make the morning fair. 

" Then the birds with liquid singing set the 
leafy woodland ringing, 

Till the cattle in the meadow waked the joy- 
ous songs to mark; 

And the great, gold sun leaped upward, all 
the light of heaven bringing — 

Heart, hast thou a morning also, waiting 
just beyond the dark.?" 



[185] 



A BALLAD OF CHARLIE'S MEN 

Duncan and I at the kirk would wed, 
And soon should our bridal vows be said; 
But a pibroch thrilled through the morning 

air, 

And a white cockade gleamed brightly there ; 

'Twas Charlie Stuart bowed low at my side: 

O, lend me your lover now," he cried, 

And when I march homeward adown the glen 

You shall wed the bravest of Charlie's men." 

Duncan my lover was good to see. 
Straight and tall as the dark pine tree; 
Black was his eye as the deep midnight; 
His arm was strong and his step was light ; 
His words were kind and his laugh rang 

free, — 
And oh! he was all in the world to me! 
But he marched away through the narrow 

glen 
To fight for Scotland with Charlie's men. 

The days were long and the nights were 

drear, 
My heart grew sick with its weight of fear; 
For the battle was fought and the battle was 

lost. 
And the hearts of the living must count the 

cost; 
And Charlie Stuart's an outlaw now 

[186] 



With a price in gold on his bonnie brow; 
And never the watchers in brae and glen 
Shall welcome the coming of Charlie's men. 

And Duncan, my lover, my life, my light, 
Was the first to fall in that bitter fight ; 
With Scotland's banner clasped close in his 

hand 
They laid him to sleep in that stranger land ; 
Narrow and lonely and low is his bed, 
And the gorse of the Southland blooms thick 

o'er his head; 
But still I roam through the mournful glen 
And wait for the marching of Charlie's men. 

The mavis and merle in the thicket pipe 
clear, 

But the wail of the pibroch is all I can hear; 

The heather a-bloom takes the tint of his 
plaid. 

And the foam on the burn shows the Stuart 
cockade ; 

The moonlight that falls on the rocks of Ben 
More 

Is alive with the gleam of his targe and clay- 
more — 

And still in my heart and the haunted glen 

There echoes the marching of Charlie's men. 



[187] 



A LOST IDEAL 

A MOCKING bird from out the South 
Sang through my dream, he said, 

But when the dream was done I heard 
A woman' voice instead. 

A woman's voice that strove to wake 
The joyous tones I missed; 

But only breathed a sigh across 
The lips that pain had kissed. 

A deep perfume of tropic flowers 
Stole through my dream, he said; 

But when I sought the blossoms bright 
I saw a face instead. 

A woman's face where Nature wrote 
The score of some grand hymn, 

Then blotting it with life and toil 
Left all the record dim. 

And in the dream my soul thrice turned 

To greet a comrade call; 
But when I woke the gray of night 

Lay silent over all. 



[188] 



THE LIFE-BOND 

"The last brotherhood is of pain." — Hindoo Saying. 

You think my mouth is over-stern 

For woman-grace and tenderness ; 

You wonder if my lips could learn 

The trick of love word and caress ; 

You sadden when you meet my eyes ; 

You say they are too still and deep, 

Like water where a shadow lies 

Some secret thing to hide and keep. 

My face no smooth, soft beauty owns, 

Unlined and happy as a flower; 

My voice has lack of laughing tones 

To charm you in a care-free hour — 

But I have lived ! I do not need 

Your play-day love, that only seeks 

It's own light joy, nor stays to heed 

The message which the shadow speaks. 

Death-darkening eyes have looked in mine 

And gone the braver for that glance; 

And hearts sore-pressed have sought a sign. 

Then turned to meet the fighting chance; 

And hands that fought to hold the breach 

Have caught fresh weapons from my hands; 

And lips that knew but stranger speech 

Have learned how love may understand. 

Joy with you, friend, and happiness ! 

You do not need me now, but when 

Life wills your hour of pain and stress 

Turn back — and find me waiting then. 

[189] 



TO SONG 

Grant us, O Soul of Song, that we may find 
Much joy in singing, though the road be blind; 
Thou knowest we, thy Children of the Air, 
Must get our dinners, God alone knows where, 
And for a ragged coat have scanty words ; 
So let us joy in music with the birds, 
Our brother minstrels, who among the trees 
Have short delight what time the summer please. 
Make summer for us, e'en when winter snows 
Beat down upon us and the north winds blows; 
Fence us with mail against the biting blast, 
And feed our fancy, though the body fast. 

If any Hall keep still the olden cheer. 
Grant thou we find an ungrudged welcome there, 
And as of old have leave to harp and sing 
Till wild bees hum the reveille of Spring ; 
And black birds pipe it, and the cuckoos call; 
And every ivy leaf along the wall 
Shakes to the sun a tender green leaf -wing 
And whispers "Spring ! The Spring ! It is the 

Spring !" 
Then Ho! for pouch and staff and cockle shell! 
Ho ! for the road we know and love so well ! 
Stay an you will! For us the Open Way; 
The sun and stars and winds of Arcady ! 



[190] 



HER GIFT 

To Our Lady of La Casa Nichita. 

She would have told you that she had 

No clever gifts to win and wile ; 
No cunning trick of speech or song 

To charm and change your mood the while; 
Not under her smooth fingers flowed 

The music, by her touch set free; 
Not through her hands her inward dream 

Was wrought for all the world to see. 

And yet — she spoke, and in his soul 

One heard the song his vision sought; 
And one within her eyes beheld 

The symbol of his noblest thought; 
And one who held that Beauty dwelt 

A thing apart from common need. 
Passed through her door and went his way 

To voice a finer, truer creed. 

She would have said no gift was hers. 

No power of speech or brush or pen ; 
And yet — who passing touched her hand. 

Turned to his highest dream again 
With surer faith and larger hope — 

For hers, the great gift to inspire, 
To shine across our duller lives 

And light them as with temple fire. 



[191] 



THE LIFE EXPRESS 

When all is said life's not unlike a train — 

Save that we take it if we will or no — 

And whence it comes, and whither it will go, 

Or if it will companion us again. 

No guide books tell, no mapped time tables 

show; 
Nor of the miles ahead can any know — 
Whether tomorrow's road be hill or plain. 
For some the swift express ; the rumbling 

freight 
For others; some must till the end harrass 
Their souls for fare, while others ride in state — 
Yet to one end that heeds not caste or class. 
When we outside that far Last Station wait 
May the Great Agent meet us with a pass. 



[192] 



FOR A BIRTHDAY 

Wiser and older grown 

I will not wish you, nor say, 
" Many returns of the day ! " 
Nor bid for happiness — 

Since Life will ban or bless 
Still in the old, stem way. 

If years be a boon or curse 
I reckon a close-drawn thing ; 

And doubt if the good they bring 
Outweighs by a hair the pain — 

If the loss sink not the gain — 

Yet, be yours as you onward wend, 

Strong soul, and rest at the end. 



[193] 



GOD SPEED 

Comrade, whose eyes have seen beyond 
That Last Horizon lone and far; 
Remoter than the utmost star 
That watches on the rim of space ; 
I that shall see no more your face, 
Save in some vision brief and fond, 
I that alone must go and come, 
I that alone must stay or roam. 
Bid you God speed and hearty cheer. 
Bid you a joy untouched of fear 
On every road a soul may take. 
To fuller life, to dreamless sleep. 
To all a heart may give or keep, 
God speed you, guide your going — yet 
The roads of earth not quite forget. 



[ 194 ] 



A CHANT TO DEATH 

When the bright sunrise slants across the hills 

And every peak is like a golden tower 

Where some glad face looks East to meet the 

day, 
My heart leaps strong with thankfulness for 

dawn, 
Singing like Memnon in the sands of old 
For fresh hope and new promise. And when 

noon 
Poises the far sun midway in his course 
I j oy in space for working ; for an hour 
In which to shape my hidden thought a form 
Before my fellows, that my dream may live 
When I am brother to the silent dust. 

And when night's shadow folds the weary earth. 
With all her burden of tired hearts that pray, 
Best of life's gifts, sleep and forgetfulness, 
One boon alone I crave of heaven, rest. 
But most I bow in thankfulness for death ; 
Wise death, kind death, who softly stoops to 

lay 
All pitiful a cool hand on the brow 
That life has fevered with his pitiless 
Stem goading on an ever-fruitless round. 

Master of Fate, and rest's own almoner, 

No angel sable-winged and harsh and cold. 

No black-robed, hidden-visaged shape art thou, 

[195] 



Preying upon the frightened souls of men; 
But a near friend, whose hand upon our own 
Touches to strengthen, and whose shadow is 
Like the one tree within a sun swept waste. 
Hope giver, healer, they who would upbraid 
Thy name and coming know not thee nor life; 
But we who work here in the dark, we know. 

We know whose name gives courage for the 

fight; 
Whose call rings "Forward" down the lagging 

line. 
Captained by thee we lift each day the load 
To aching shoulders, take the road once more 
With song and laughter and bugle blown 
To straggling comrades : "Look you, man, good 

cheer !" 
Who knows? Perhaps tonight we bivouac; 
Face front, and let us win our rest like men; 
With tasks well done and nothing scrimped or 

shirked ; 
Sure that at last we get discharge of Life 
And serve a gentler master, even Death. 



[196] 



THE FAR-CALLED 

The French peasants have a belief that if a green 
bough be found upon the cradle of a new-born child 
the fairies have called that child to wander far in quest 
of other-worldly things all its mortal life. 

When on the bed of birth I lay 

Out of the dark one came, 
And laid the green bough on my head 

And kissed my lips with flame ; 
And whispered in my ear the call 

I may no more deny ; 
Nor ever drown in lesser sound 

Until the hour I die. 

And though my feet go down the street 

They feel not wood and stone; 
But tread the floor of forests far, 

And uplands wide and lone : 
And eyes like clouds blown through with rain 

Turn pleading-like to me — 
Their sorrow I may stay to ease. 

But not their gladness see. 

I know the roads my kindred take 

To gain and gear and home, 
I turn and bid them all Godspeed — 

And yet I may not come. 
I know the good of gain and gear, 

And hearth alight with love — 
Bide ye that may — I cannot stay. 

That seeking still must rove. 

[ 197 ] 



And little camp-fires in the dark 

Send out their light to me; 
And little sweet, low voices call: 

" O traveller, who are ye. 
That goes so fast, that goes so far 

Along the hidden night. 
As if ye sought some radiant star, 

Nor ever camp-fire's light?" 

But for my soul I may not turn. 

My feet are strong and swift; 
I go to find beyond the wind 

Where unknown mountains lift, 
The tree where-from the green bough came, 

The voice that calls to me; 
Visions more bright than star or light. 

That lead and beckon me. 



[198] 



TIRED 

I WONDER if the growing grass 

Has ever weariness? 
Or the little flowers that lean 

The gray hillside to bless? 

Their roots reach down into the mold 

So deep, that once was men ; 
I wonder do they ever draw 

A heart-ache from it then? 

And the rain that patters down 
On the green blades like tears; 

Has it kept a taste of salt 
From the forgotten years? 

And the wind that has been breath 

Of happy lips or sad; 
Is that why its voice has still 

No sound ever wholly glad? 

Forget us, Earth, forget; 

When we dry our tears on your breast; — 
As we and the mold are one 

Let us nothing know but rest. 



[199] 



WHEN SHE WENT ON 

How white and calm and still she lay! 
The little child-like hands at rest, 
Folded so lightly on her breast — 
It seemed some solemn wonder-play ! 

The waxen lids pressed down her eyes, 
Blue, wistful eyes that could not see 
How still beside her tenderly 
We kept our useless ministries. 

One smoothed the pillow at her head. 
With hands that trembled overmuch; 
And drew the sheet with lingering touch. 
And closed the books that she had read. 

The little room still seemed to hold 
All of her warm, bright, living self; 
The empty slippers on the shelf 
Still kept her foot's slim mold. 

O restless feet that could not wait 
Our slower footsteps, blundering, fond; 
Turn back to us when soon or late 
We seek you in the Land Beyond. 



[200] 



O GREAT CONSOLER 

A HYMN to thee, a hymn to thee, consoler ; 
Thou strong consoler who hast touched our 
life 
With a great quiet brooding o'er its strife; 
With a great peace beyond its wrath and 
dolor. 

All other hopes, all other loves, may fail us; 

Thou over all art truth and constancy ; 
Our little passions quench themselves in thee ; 

Thy balm and strength must at the last 
avail us. 

Walk with me then as brother walks with 
brother ; 
Hold thou my hand; I think I hear thee 
say: 
" Bethink thee ; this may be thy last 'today' ; 
Thine eyes may not look out across 
another. 

" Then forward ! face what e'er it brings and 
laugh 
Straight in the eyes of Fortune at her 
worst ; 
No loss he fears who hath lost all at first, 
Nor fears to drink, who my dark wine 
would quaff. 

[201] 



Art empty-handed? Yea, but at the best 
No wealth of earth could stay an hour my 
feet ; 

Dost thirst ! My cup upon the lip is sweet ; 
Art weary? I alone can give thee rest." 



[W2] 



AND THIS IS LIFE 

And this is life — to have and hold 

A little love, a little gold; 
To prove the Dream with work well done ; 

To rest an hour before the sun 
Drops down to night — then journey on 

An unmapped road to seek the Dawn. 



[203] 



THE THINKER 

He who grasps at the flowers of thought 
Oft finds in his eager fingers naught, 

But leafless stalks where the blossoms hung, 
In some long-lost summer when life was 
young — 

Or at best but a glimmer of thistle down 

To sprinkle his hair 'neath the laurel crown. 



[204] 



DEC 12 1910 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



'^-- -'^ flHG 



